Reprinted by permission of Mrs. g. P. Wells.

The Time Machine

By H. G. WELLS

The time traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.

"You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception."

"Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?" said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.

"I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions."

"That is all right," said the Psychologist.

"Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence."

"There I object," said Filby. "Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things---- "

"So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?" "Don't follow you," said Filby.

"Can a cube that does not last for any time at all have a real existence?"

Filby became pensive. "Clearly," the Time Traveller proceeded, "any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives."

"That," said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; "that . . . very clear indeed."

"Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked," continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. "Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?"

"I have not," said the Provincial Mayor.

"It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon

Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the thing. See?"

"I think so," murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic words. "Yes, I think I see it now," he said after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.

"Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

"Scientific people," proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, "know very well that Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space generally recognised? But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension."

"But," said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, "if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?"

The Time Traveller smiled. "Are you so sure we can move freely in Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions. But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there."

"Not exactly," said the Medical Man. "There are balloons." "But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the in-

equalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement." "Still they could move a little up and down," said the Medical Man. "Easier, far easier down than up."

"And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment."

"My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface."

"But the great difficulty is this," interrupted the Psychologist. "You can move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about in Time."

"That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilised man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?"

"Oh, this" began Filby, "is all------------- "

"Why not?" said the Time Traveller.

"It's against reason," said Filby.

"What reason?" said the Time Traveller.

"You can show black is white by argument," said Filby, "but you will never convince me."

"Possibly not," said the Time Traveller. "But now you begin to
see the object of my investigations into the geometry of Four
Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine------------- "

"To travel through Time!" exclaimed the Very Young Man.

"That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver determines."

Filby contented himself with laughter.

"But I have experimental verification," said the Time Traveller.

"It would be remarkably convenient for the historian," the Psychologist suggested. "One might travel back and verify the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!"

"Don't you think you would attract attention?" said the Medical Man. "Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms."

"One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato," the Very Young Man thought.

"In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much."

"Then there is the future," said the Very Young Man. "Just think! One might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry on ahead!"

"To discover a society," said I, "erected on a strictly communistic basis."

"Of all the wild extravagant theories!" began the Psychologist.

"Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until--------------------- "

"Experimental verification!" cried I. "You are going to verify that?"

"The experiment!" cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.

"Let's see your experiment anyhow," said the Psychologist, "though it's all humbug, you know."

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. "I wonder what he's got?"

"Some sleight-of-hand trick or other," said the Medical Man, and Filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but before he had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby's anecdote collapsed.

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that follows—unless his explanation is to be accepted—is an absolutely unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearth rug. On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell full upon the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low armchair nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost between the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left. The Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. "Well?" said the Psychologist.

"This little affair," said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, "is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal." He pointed to the part with his finger. "Also, here is one little white lever, and here is another."

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. "It's beautifully made," he said.

"It took two years to make," retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: "Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack."

There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth his finger towards the lever. "No," he said suddenly. "Lend me your hand." And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual's hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone—vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. "Well?" he said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then, getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to fill his pipe.

We stared at each other. "Look here," said the Medical Man, "are you in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has travelled into Time?"

"Certainly," said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) "What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there"—he indicated the laboratory— "and when that is put together I mean to have a journey on my own account."

"You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?" said Filby.

"Into the future or the past—I don't, for certain, know which." After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. "It must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere," he said. "Why?" said the Time Traveller.

"Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must have travelled through this time."

"But," said I, "if it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!"

"Serious objections," remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

"Not a bit," said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: "You think. You can explain that. It's presentation below the threshold, you know, diluted presentation."

"Of course," said the Psychologist, and reassured us. "That's a simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It's plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in time. That's plain enough." He passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. "You see?" he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

"It sounds plausible enough to-night," said the Medical Man; "but wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning."

"Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?" asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.

"Look here," said the Medical Man, "are you perfectly serious? Or is this a trick—like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?"

"Upon that machine," said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, "I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life."

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked at me solemnly.

2 £fe>

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown him far less scepticism. For we should have perceived his motives: a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Tilings that would have made the fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment: they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. lhat I remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnasan. He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

'Hie next Thursday I went again to Richmond—I suppose I was one of the Time Traveller's most constant guests—and arriving late, found four or five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and—"It's half-past seven now," said the Medical Man. "I suppose we'd better have dinner?"

"Where's----- ?" said I, naming our host.

"You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's not back. Says he'll explain when he comes."

"It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil," said the Editor of a well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor afore-mentioned, a certain journalist, and another —a quiet, shy man with a beard—whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at the dinner table about the Time Traveller's absence, and I suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of the "ingenious paradox and trick" we had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it first. "Hallo!" I said. "At last!" And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us. I gave a cry of surprise. "Good heavens! man, what's the matter?" cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And the whole tableful turned towards the door.

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer—either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it—a cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room. He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass with champagne, and pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his face. "What on earth have you been up to, man?" said the Doctor. The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. "Don't let me disturb you," he said, with a certain faltering articulation. "I'm all right." He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught. "That's good," he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came into his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. "I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll come down and explain things. . . . Save me some of that mutton. I'm starving for a bit of meat."

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he was all right. The Editor began a question. "Tell you presently," said the Time Traveller. "I'm—funny! Be all right in a minute."

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered, bloodstained socks. Then the door closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool gathering. Then, "Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist," I heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in head-lines. And this brought my attention back to the bright dinner table.

"What's the game?" said the Journalist. "Has he been doing the Amateur Cadger? I don't follow." I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read my own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else had noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man, who rang the bell—the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner—for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. "Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?" he inquired. "I feel assured it's this business of the Time Machine," I said, and took up the Psychologist's account of our previous meeting. The new guests were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. "What was this time travelling? A man couldn't cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?" And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist, too, would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They were both the new kind of journalist—very joyous, irreverent young men. "Our Special Correspondent in the Day after To-morrow reports," the Journalist was saying—or rather shouting—when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained of the change that had startled me.

"I say," said the Editor hilariously, "these chaps here say you have been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?"

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word. He smiled quietly, in his old way. "Where's my mutton?" he said. "What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!"

"Story!" cried the Editor.

"Story be damned!" said the Time Traveller. "I want something to eat. I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And the salt."

"One word," said I. "Have you been time travelling?"

"Yes," said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.

"I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note," said the Editor. The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with his finger nail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others. The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller pushed his plate away, and looked round us. "I suppose I must apologise," he said. "I was simply starving. I've had a most amazing time." He reached out his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. "But come into the smoking-room. It's too long a story to tell over greasy plates." And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.

"You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?" he said to me, leaning back in his easy chair and naming the three new guests.

"But the thing's a mere paradox," said the Editor.

"I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story, but I can't argue. I will," he went on, "tell you the story of what has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from interruptions. I want to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be it! It's true—every word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then . . . I've lived eight days . . . such days as no human being ever lived before! I'm nearly wom out, but I shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no interruptions! Is it agreed?"

"Agreed," said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed "Agreed." And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only two much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink—and, above all, my own inadequacy—to express its quality. You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each other. After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller's face.

3 ^

"I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of tht ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday; but on Friday, when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!

"I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. Tire laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

"I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.

"The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface of the earth seemed changed—melting and flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

"The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine for which I was unable to account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind—a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread—until at last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilisation, I thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the hillside, and remain there without any wintery intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of stopping.

"The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction—possibly a far-reaching explosion—would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions—into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk —one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air.

"There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hailstones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin. 'Fine hospitality,' said I, 'to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you.'

"Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

"My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space—half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment, and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.

"I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently slain.

"Already I saw other vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hillside dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the un-melted hailstones piled along their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again.

"But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered.

I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

"Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature— perhaps four feet high—clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or buskins—I could not clearly distinguish which—were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.

"He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive—that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the machine.

4 £•»

"In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

"There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins.

But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication.

"And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and—this may seem egotism on my part—I fancied even then that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.

"As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.

"For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Fight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children—asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that 1 had built the Time Machine in vain.

"I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck.

The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind.

"The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over their heads was of a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long-neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.

"The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-wom. Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-coloured robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.

"The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. Tire floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs—blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognised as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they were strange.

"Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks and so forth into the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loth to follow I heir example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure.

"And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that llic corner of the marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, I he general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in the hall, and most of Ihcm, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same soft, and yet strong, silky material.

"Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of some camal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was there—a lloury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by I he strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their import.

"However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute attempt to leam the speech of these new men of mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fairhaired little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount of amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb 'to eat.' But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined. And very little doses I found they were before long, for I never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued.

"A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these little people. I went out through the portal into the sunlit world again so soon as my hunger was satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my own devices.

"The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. At first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different from the world I had known—even the flowers. The big building I had left was situate on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present position. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.

"As I walked I was watchful for every impression that could possibly help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the world—for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumbled heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants— nettles possibly—but wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience—the first intimation of a still stranger discovery—but of that I will speak in its proper place.

"Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested for a while, I realised that there were no small houses to be seen. Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English landscape, had disappeared.

" 'Communism,' said * to myself.

"And on the heels or that came another thought. I looked at the half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike. And the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged, then, that the children of that time were extremely precocious, physically at least, and I found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion.

"Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force. Where population is balanced and abundant, much child-bearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an efficient family, and the specialisation of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.

"While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.

"There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognise, corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in soft moss, the arm rests cast and filed into the resemblance of griffins' heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and fair a view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied. Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.

"So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half-truth—or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)

"It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life—the true civilising process that makes life more and more secure—had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are

it is how she would look. They went off as if they had received the last possible insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, and I tried him once more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

"But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I thought I heard something stir inside—to be explicit, I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle—but I must have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours—that is another matter.

"I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again. 'Patience,' said I to myself. 'If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. To sit among all these unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.' Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.

"Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two things got back to the old footing. I made what progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point, or their language was excessively simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.

"So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in materia, and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom-laden trees and tree-fems. Here and there water shone like silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my first walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, noi could I start any reflection with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound: a thud—thud—thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight.

"After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there war often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above k sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

"And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and social arrangements, and so forth. But while such details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as I found here. Conceive the tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe! What would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the Parcels Delivery Company, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain these things to him! And even of what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend either apprehend or believe? Then, think how narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval between myself and these of the Golden Age! I was sensible of much which was unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general impression of automatic organisation, I fear I can convey very little of the difference to your mind.

"In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere beyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among this people there were none.

"I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilisation and a decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet these' people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewel, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going.

"Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt—how shall I put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to me!

"That day, too, I made a friend—of a sort. It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes. When I realised this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right before I left her. I had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her. In that, however, I was wrong.

"This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers—evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have done. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was Weena, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended—as I will tell you!

"She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She tried to follow me everywhere, and my next journey out and about it went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was very great, her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. Until it was too late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my return to the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.

"It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes.

"It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm. But my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea-anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the palace. I thought I would make a virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise.

"The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. Three several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct, you must understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known. I doubted my eyes.

"As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned the view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere creatures of the half-light. 'They must have been ghosts,' I said; 'I wonder whence they dated.' For a queer notion of Grant Allen's came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of my head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine. But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.

"I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know it.

"Well, one very hot morning—my fourth, I think—as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.

"The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I remembered that strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

"My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all-fours, or only with its forearms held very low. After an instant's pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, hall closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a human spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped, and when I had lit another the little monster had disappeared.

"I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world were not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.

"I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organisation? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the daylight into the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.

"They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form to remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well, and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But my mind was already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

"Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark—the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things—witness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling and awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light—all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

"Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of ventilating-shafts and wells along the hill slopes—everywhere, in fact, except along the river valley—showed how universal were its ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial under-world that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the how of this splitting of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though, for myself, I very soon felt that it fell far short of the truth.

"At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you—and wildly incredible!—and yet even now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to utilise underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilisation; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till,

in the end----- ! Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such

artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?

"Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people—due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor—is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf—which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich—will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort, and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally enough.

"The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and general co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the Id low-man. This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one. But even on this supposition the balanced civilisation that was a I last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was now fur fallen into decay. The too-perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What had happened to the Undergrounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had seen of the Morlocks—that, by the bye, was the name by which these creatures were called—I could imagine that the modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the 'Eloi,' the beautiful race that I already knew.

"Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, loo, if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I was disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the topic was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes. And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I solemnly burned a match.

"It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to appreciate.

"The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight—that night Weena was among them—and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even then that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different. But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me. I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back.

"It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the south-westward towards the rising country that is now called Combe Wood, I observed far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any I had hitherto seen. It was larger that the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the fagade had an Oriental look: the face of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspect suggested a difference in use, and I was minded to push on and explore. But the day was growing late, and I had come upon the sight of the place after a long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day, and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium.

"Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. 'Good-bye, little Weena,' I said, kissing licr; and then, putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the climbing hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared my courage might leak away! At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave a most piteous cry, and, running to me, she began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in the throat of the well. I saw her agonised face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks to which I clung.

"I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from I lie sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the liars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into Ihc blackness beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after I hat experience I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible, while little Weena's head showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared.

"I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone. But even while I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a slender loophole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.

"I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.

"I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of the Over-world people; so that I was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, 'You are in for it now,' and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from me, and I came to a large open space, and, striking another match, saw that I had entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter darkness beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one could see in the burning of a match.

"Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the bye, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again! Then the match burned down, and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness.

"I have thought since how particularly ill equipped I was for such an experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke— at times I missed tobacco frightfully—even without enough matches. If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the underworld in a second, and examined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature how endowed me with—hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still remained to me.

"I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until lhat moment that there was any need to economise them, and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. I felt the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing. The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realisation of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They started away, and then I could feel them approaching me again. They clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently, and shouted again—rather discordantly. This time they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as they came back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another match and escape under the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out, and in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after me.

"In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated again, and when my second match had ended, I struck my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the opening into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and I was violently tugged backward. I lit my last match . . . and it incontinently went out. But I had my hand on the climbing bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy.

"That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I felt all the sensations of falling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.

"Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now

of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, I hat night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed pretematurally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time Machine?

"So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. 'Ilie clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping houses, and by a statue—a Faun, or some such figure, minus the head. I Icre too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose were still to come.

"From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired—my feet, in particular, were very sore—I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking danger—a danger I did not care to let my imagination loose upon—there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against.

"I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I decided that I would not face it, but would pass the night upon the open hill.

"Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hillside was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.

"Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great preces-sional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organisations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought.

"Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away.

"I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in Nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on rats and suchlike vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he was—far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman

sons of men---- ! I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After

all, they were less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had gone. Why should i trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the antlike Morlocks preserved and preyed upon—probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my side!

"Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fulness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear.

"i had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering-ram. I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.

8 $6*

"I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then— though I never followed up the thought—of what might have happened, or might be happening, to the living things in the sea.

"The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human.

"Within the big valves of the door—which were open and broken— we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognised by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and, clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own time. But they must have been airtight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their contents.

"Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was, nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances been bodily removed—by the Morlocks as I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea-urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside me.

"And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little from my mind.

"To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle of old-time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpetre; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed plants; that was all! I was sorry for that, because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the ceiling—many of them cracked and smashed—which suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

"Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all.¹ The end I had come in at was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the 'area' of a London house before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant and its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time in this academic examination of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire. And

*It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built into the side of a hill.—Ed.

then down in the remote blackness of the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had heard down the well.

"I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I heard.

"Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it I presently recognised as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralised upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.

"Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to Weena. 'Dance,' I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling The Land of the Leal as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a modest cancan, in part a step-dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally inventive, as you know.

"Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was a most fortunate, thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far un-likelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilised millions of years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that it was inflamable and bumed with a good bright flame—was, in fact, an excellent candle—and I put it in my pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

"I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted into dust. One comer I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly took my fancy.

"As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite cartridges! [ shouted 'Eureka!' and smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay. 1 never felt such a disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came. Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence. I really believe that, had they not been so, I should have rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into non-existence.

"It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding place had still to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks—I had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work.

"We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.

"While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.

"I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focussed by dew-drops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In this decadence; too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

"She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up, and, in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very black, and Weena clung lo me convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to I lie darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. I struck none of my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right I land I had my iron bar.

"For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same queer sounds and voices I had heard in the Under-world. There were evidently several of the Mor-locks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another minute \ felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.

"It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. With a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!

"She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realisation. In manoeuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire and encamp where we were. I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.

"The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away. One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economise my camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her, but she lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.

"Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and—it had gone! Then they gripped and closed with me, again. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered, and went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled- up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I was free.

"The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me—three battered at my feet—and then I recognised, with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through the wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish. As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks' flight.

"Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks' path. It was a close race. Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire!

"And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hillside were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realise their blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.

"Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would presently be able to see me. I was even thinking of beginning the fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was gone.

"At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.

"For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the day.

"I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest. From its summit I could now make out through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still pulsated internally with fire, towards the hiding place of the Time Machine.

I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena.

II seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again—terribly alone. I began to lliink of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.

"But, as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches. The box must have leaked before it was lost.

1 o

"About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival. I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its fertile banks. The gay robes of the beautiful people moved hither and thither among the trees. Some were bathing in exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain. And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Under-world. I understood now what all the beauty of the Over-world people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same.

"I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

"It is a law of Nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

"So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry. But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection—absolute permanency. Apparently, as time went on, the feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected, had become disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as mortal wit could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I give it to you.

"After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my theorising passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and refreshing sleep.

"I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.

"And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid down into grooves.

"At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.

"Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not to use it.

"A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal. For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks. Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose.

"Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The bronze panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. I was in the dark—trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I chuckled gleefully.

"I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me. Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light only on the box.

"You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine. Then came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted. Once, indeed, they almost got away from me. As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head—I could hear the Morlock's skull ring—to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last scramble.

"But at last the lever was fixed and pulled over. The clinging hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.

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"I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch—into futurity.

"As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then—though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity—the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set—it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.

"I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and southeastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about i nc were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green 11iat one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

"The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt—pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

"Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennas, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.

"As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.

"I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs; all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun—a little larger, a little duller—the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthly Crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

"So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, .watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky, and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.

"I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow ■.aiid-bank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from I he beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon I h is bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged I hat my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.

"Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realised that an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be I he moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth.

"Tire darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Iteyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would he hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives—all that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw i lie black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.

"A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal—there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing— against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.

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"So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and passed, and others came. Presently, when the millions dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognise our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism down.

"I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a flash.

"Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them.

I got off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around nic was my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream.

"And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which I he Morlocks had carried my machine.

"For a time rny brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came llirough the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall Gazette on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and, looking at the limepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.

"I know," he said, after a pause, "that all this will be absolutely incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here lo-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures."

He looked at the Medical Man. "No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?"

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's face, and looked round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots oi colour swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar—the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The others, as far as I remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. "What a pity it is you're not a writer of stories!" he said, putting his hand on the Time Traveller's shoulder.

"You don't believe it?"

"Well------- "

"I thought not."

The Time Traveller turned to us. "Where are the matches?" he said. He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. "To tell you the truth ... I hardly believe it myself. . . . And yet . . ."

His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. "The gynaaceum's odd," he said. The Psychologist leant forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.

"I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one," said the Journalist. "How shall we get home?"

"Plenty of cabs at the station," said the Psychologist.

"It's a curious thing," said the Medical Man; "but I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?"

The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: "Certainly not."

"Where did you really get them?" said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. "They were put into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time." He stared round the room. "I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you and the atmosphere of every day are too much for my memory. Did I ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And where did the dream come from? ... I must look at that machine. If there is one!"

He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch—for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it—and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.

The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand along the damaged rail. "It's all right now," he said. "The story I told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out here in the cold." He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking-room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat. The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good-night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a "gaudy lie." I''or my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go next day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him. 'llie laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the squat, substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me in the smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake. "I'm frightfully busy," said he, "with that thing in there."

"But is it not some hoax?" I said. "Do you really travel through time?"

"Really and truly I do." And he looked frankly into my eyes. He hesitated. His eye wandered about the room. "I only want half an hour," he said. "I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll forgive my leaving you now?"

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw that I could barely save that engagement. I got up and went down the passage to tell the Time Traveller.

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment—a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. "Has
Mr.----- gone out that way?" said I.

"No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here."

At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson, I stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

EPILOGUE

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now—if I ma)' use the phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time! I say, for my own part. He, I know—for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made— I bought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilisation only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me I he future is still black and blank—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

From Shocks, by Algernon Blackwood, reprinted by permission of £. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., and a. P. Watt & Son.

iHlsewhere and Otherwise

By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

Among the genuinely strange stories of the world the strang-cst are those concerned with total disappearance. Apart from murders and destruction, where bodies are variously done away with, these "total disappearances" stand by themselves. Hi presto! and the fellow is gone, leaving not a wrack behind. The class, naturally, is small. Sydney Mantravers certainly belonged to it.

His case is interesting because, after a total disappearance of four years or so, he re-appeared. Not only did he re-appear, but he tried hard to tell me where he had been and what he had been doing during his long absence. He failed. Such experiences apparently seem uncommunicable in any language at the disposal of humanity, since they transcend anything humanity has undergone. The necessary words have not yet been coined. Before he could satisfy the thousand questions I burned to ask him, questions, too, he might in time have partly answered, he was gone again, this time, as we say, for good.

I saw him go, I also saw him return: that is, I saw him disappear and re-appear. This was my unsought, unwelcomed privilege. I was with him when he went, I was there when he came back. That final going in death robbed him, I firmly believe, of a burden of intense and marvellous confession, while it robbed me, but in particular robbed Dr. Vronski, his fellow student, of a rich harvest that was almost within my grasp—a revelation possibly that might have extended the present knowledge of the race.

Sydney Mantravers remains for me an extraordinary, even terrible, problem. The mere mention of his name brings back the haunting radiance of his skin and eyes, the breath of some unearthly atmosphere which stimulates, while yet it cools, the blood. Eyes, skin and those thousand unanswered questions will haunt me till I, too, enter that silent darkness which makes reappearance apparently impossible.

His story is not really complicated. It is only that the sequence of its details covers a considerable time, a somewhat extensive field as well. It is best to tell it precisely as it happened. It began, then, in a London club, of which we were both members, and the occasion was August 4th, the night of the Ultimatum. War had been declared. England was at war with Germany. It was a night, as all remember, of intense excitement, of strange exaltation. Emotion was deep and real. It was not personal emotion. All of us, old and young, thought first of the country.

Mantravers, a distant cousin, was over sixty; I was a young officer of twenty-five. He had always been kind to me, I knew him fairly well, he had given me good tips in days gone by, we were friends of a kind, and his knowledge of life, as a rich, travelled, experienced bachelor, had often stood me in good stead. I respected, if rather dreaded, him, dreaded, that is, his strange high-brow theories, his attainments in higher physics, his amazing ideas about space and time and what not. Occasionally, he would pour something of all this into me, leaving me breathless, uneasy, perhaps a little scared. My main interests being horses, women, money and personal advancement, the dread of his intellectual attainments was understandable, but he declared he liked to talk to me because, if ignorant, I was what he called "open-minded and intelligent," while I think he twigged some secret curiosity in me at the same time. I used to think of those occasional talks as "trying it on the dog," but when once I mentioned this he shook his head. "No, no," he said, "it's not that. You happen to have an unusual mind, an original make-up. If you were trained a bit I could tell you more. You could do things. Your ignorance is to the good, for you would have nothing to un-learn."

His greatest friend was a certain Dr. Vronski, whom I knew

slightly too, another "advanced intellectual" whose experiments with glands, hypnotism, yoga, and other adventures into difficult fields brought him more than once into conflict with the Law. Vronski I saw rarely, he never favoured me with special talks, but he treated i nc with a certain courtesy, almost a touch of deference in his manner somewhere, as though I interested him as a specimen, or as someone with possibilities that must be watched, at any rate, not damaged, this attitude due, I felt sure, to things my cousin had said about me. I was, naturally, in the confidence of neither. I mention I his strange Dr. Vronski because of the role he inevitably played. Another odd thing I must mention too at this point—the astonishing lact that Mantravers, already over sixy, looked even younger than Vronski, who was forty perhaps. My cousin's youthful air, indeed, was a standing joke almost. Not looked merely—he was young. He had not aged for years; for a quarter of a century, the story ran, he had not changed. Yet, when I caught up with the tale and its undeniable evidence, I had the convinced intuition that this amazing preservation had its mysterious roots, not in any experiment with glands, but in some secret adventure or discovery that had been undertaken by this amazing pair, had failed in Vronski's case, yet succeeded with my cousin. Sydney Mantravers, to put it ridiculously, had arrested decay, I hat gradual decay which we call growing older, for something like a score of years.

This was uppermost in my mind, even a rather dreadful barrier between us, each time we met and talked. Owing to my age, much of the evidence, of course, was hearsay. Yet his curious youthfulness at sixty never failed to rise in my mind, often to strike me in the lace with its uncanniness. He had somehow escaped a good twenty-live years of life. It was present in my mind when the Ultimatum came.

In the club, then, that night of strain and tension, I chanced to he sitting with him when the news we had all been waiting for came in—that war had been declared. We were all "worked up" and above ourselves. Mantravers, too, was all worked up—but, as I suddenly discovered with a shock, not about the declaration of war. He was stirred and excited about quite another matter, a wholly personal matter.

It was this difference of key that isolated him oddly from what all were feeling at the moment. While my mind was occupied entirely with questions about England, the Empire, our army and navy, with my own immediate prospects as a soldier as well, he kept asking me questions about some trivial personal matter. It got on my nerves a bit. Too excited to be puzzled, I felt first exasperated, then angry. He kept asking me if I remembered someone called Defrayne. But the name conveyed nothing to me. I had never heard it, and in any case what could it matter at such a time—unless, perhaps, this Defrayne had something to do with the war.

"He was in the 9th, you know," said Mantravers, as though Defrayne did, after all, have something to say to the war. I hardly listened, I was barely polite, my interest was so entirely elsewhere. The only point I noticed as curious, and had been aware of, indeed, even before— though the excitement had prevented my paying special attention to it—was the colour of my cousin's face. His skin was dead white of rather a ghastly kind. "Try and remember," he urged. "Look back a bit. He was in your regiment. You must have heard of him." But I listened through a chorus of other voices, for we were all talking at once. . . .

It was well after midnight, "God Save the King" already sung, when, to my surprise, Mantravers begged me to walk home with him, since it was on my own way, and when we reached his door asked, even insisted, that I should come in. He wished to tell me something. Once in his room, a drink before us, I remember that a sensation of discomfort, almost of alarm, came over me, and that I began to watch him more closely. My own preoccupation was still entirely with the war, of course. Literally, I could think of nothing else. Yet his first question, since I had naturally expected something about Germany at least, returned to his own personal affair: "You tell me," he began in a low and rather tense voice, "that you don't recall Defrayne?" I did not, and I told him so again bluntly enough, exasperation and impatience showing plainly. I had hoped for something very different.

"Then—if you don't mind—I'll tell you something," he said, and there was a nervous hesitation, almost a demand for sympathy, in his manner that made me wonder. Tire pallor in his face again struck me sharply. "I must tell someone," he went on, "and you're the sort of listener I want. You're ignorant and simple, but you're openminded." He paused for a second or two. "It's about Defrayne and myself," he added, almost in a whisper, and for some reason I felt .1 sudden shiver run down my back. It was due, this shiver, I verily believe, to an abrupt realisation that he looked twenty-five years voimger than he was. I knew this in a general way, had wondered a I it often enough. I now realised it. I felt at any rate this passing shiver.

Let me say at once that this announcement both bored and half infuriated me, so that at first I listened perfunctorily—for what possible interest could Defrayne, whoever he was, have now?—but I hat later, if considerably later, my interest was so deeply caught that I lie war, with all it meant, slipped into the background.

Strange, how many different things the mind can think of at the same time, how many different, even opposing, emotions it can hold simultaneously: the nearest approach to four-dimensional time and space we know, perhaps. The thing he had to tell was so literally beyond belief that had he told it a week, even twenty-four hours, before, it must have seemed wholly beyond belief, and I should have I bought him mad. Yet now, as I stared and listened, one ear cocked for the street where shouting, tumult and the National Anthem were si ill audible, I discovered that I did not entirely disbelieve. Nor did I, as must have been the case even the night before, regard my cousin as the victim of an elaborate hallucination, his mind deranged. On the contrary, I found myself listening to something that I felt was not necessarily impossible. And the idea dawned upon me, then, that Ibis shock of the war, which in my case was profound and real, had worked in me some swift curious change. I felt in some way older, more developed. Tire shock had matured me abruptly, as it were with a jump. A new understanding of Mantravers was bom in me. I understood, for instance, his reputation for giving "easy advice," for saying what the other fellow wanted to hear, rather than what he thought himself. His immense knowledge of life had always brought people in trouble to him, young people especially. "Go and ask Mantravers, he'll tell you what to do," was a commonplace, though it would have been more correct to say "he'll tell you what you want to hear." I now realised suddenly that this was no false friendliness in him, nor lack of principle exactly, but was due rather to his deep understanding sympathy. He put himself so completely in the other fellow's shoes that he thought the other fellow's thoughts instead of his own. It was his own power of imaginative sympathy that sent him wrong.

As my preoccupation with the war now slipped further and further into the background it flashed upon me, too, that after all I did perhaps remember having heard of Defrayne. I did not know even how the name was spelled, when suddenly there leaped into my mind the word "de Frasne," and I dimly recalled that a young officer in my regiment, of that name pronounced Defrayne, had committed suicide a good many years ago. It was well before my time, but I had heard the case spoken of. In trouble about money, a woman, questions of personal honour involved, the young subaltern had put a bullet through his temple. But he had gone to see Mantravers first. As I listened to the tense, low-pitched voice in the chair opposite to mine, details filled in the story by degrees.

A good many years before, it appeared, young de Frasne had come to ask his advice. The young fellow had involved himself in a terrible mess, yet without having done anything wrong actually. Appearances were hopelessly against him. In a tragic mood, the youngster expected, wanted, tragic advice, and Mantravers took up his case with his usual intense sympathy. He felt, that is, exactly what young de Frasne felt. "Some chaps," he had suggested, "placed as you are, might, of course, rank honour higher than life . . ." Young de Frasne went, white. "You mean . . . ?" he asked grimly. "There's always the emergency exit, isn't there?" Mantravers mentioned, lending himself fully to the other's theatrical state of mind. It never occurred to him, he swore, that the stricken youngster would take his advice seriously. "I really thought," he now told me in his flat, "that he'd go home feeling himself a stage hero—then think out another way. He would come back in the morning. But he did not come back next moming, nor any other morning."

Mantravers, forgetting all about the interview to which he had not attached much importance, went to India that same week. He never heard till he came back to England a year later, and then he only heard it casually, that the young fellow had put a bullet in his brain. The lad had passed from his memory. He forgot even what lie looked like. It gave him a horrid turn, he assured me, when he learned the truth, "for in a way, you see," he explained, "I felt responsible.

"That was some years ago," he was saying, my attention not yet wholly caught, "twenty or possibly twenty-five, and, as I've told you, I'd forgotten even what he looked like. My memory for faces is si locking. Last year in Dinard I talked and smoked, gambled too, with a delightful fellow whose face I remembered, but whose name, and where we had met, escaped me utterly, a fellow who knew me well too. He turned out to be the Italian barber in Regent Street who cuts my hair . . ."

"Yes, yes," I put in, making a show of interest, "but I'm rather like that, too."

He stared at me a moment. "Maybe," he countered briefly. "But a week ago," he went on, his face paler but his eyes oddly bright, "the same sort of thing happened to me again—at a party—and it turned out to be the last person in the world I expected."

I had not been listening properly, my thoughts still running on the war and what was coming, but the way he said this gave me a jolt for some reason. I felt a crawling again at the roots of my hair. I asked what he meant exactly.

"I went," he said in a lowered voice, "to an evening party, an At Home of sorts, and as usual I ran into all kinds of people who knew me, but whose names—and where I had met them—I could not for the life of me remember. Among them was a young chap whose face I certainly knew, knew it as well as I know yours. But his name, or where we had met before, escaped me utterly. He seemed uncommonly pleased to run across me. It was quite awkward. He didn't say much, but what he did say was to the point. 'You've forgotten me,' he said, 'but I've been waiting for this chance. I've got a debt I want to repay.' Having forgotten who he was, yet ashamed to let him see it, I murmured something vague about dining together some night. To my great embarrassment, he jumped at it. I was in a fix, you see. He was so determined, so intense. No memory of any debt occurred to me. I gave him my restaurant address, an Italian place near Leicester Square, and when he asked for a date, I rashly said that I was there most nights and that he would be very welcome . . .
and then, as I was edging off, hoping to escape him, I found instead
that he had somehow escaped me. He just melted away. The crowd
was pretty thick, a regular crush, and how he managed it so quickly
and cleverly puzzled me. One minute he was at my side, touching
actually, the next—he wasn't "

"He didn't say any more, you mean? Not even good-bye?" My interest was caught and held increasingly now.

Mantravers shook his head. "Just that he'd be there—and he was gone," came the reply. "And would you believe it," he went on, his eyes fixed hard on mine, "the very next night in my Italian restaurant, who should walk in but this very fellow. He came straight to my table too—and there I was, not knowing his name, or where we had met before, or what I could say to him, or what he wanted. It was a hell of a fix, eh? I felt an acute discomfort. This talk of a debt he had to settle was part of it, for I had a horrid feeling that I ought to remember something."

I watched my cousin more and more closely as my interest deepened, and the legend about his having somehow beaten time by twenty-five years came back to me sharply. Very forcibly, unpleasantly too, it struck me, not that he could have passed for forty instead of sixty, but that he literally was forty instead of sixty—as though decay had been arrested. I cannot say why this conviction came over me so overwhelmingly just at this particular moment, nor can I explain why the roots of my hair began to crawl again. I only knew that I was vividly aware of it, and that a faint, unpleasant touch of chill came with it.

"You know," he went on, "how one.is sometimes aware of things,
little, trivial things, I mean, without actually noticing them? Well,"
he explained, "I noticed in this way one or two odd little details.
Not important things, mind you. The important thing was to re-
member his name, where we had met, under what circumstances, but
instead of that I noticed his old-fashioned dinner-jacket, the crease
down the side of his trousers, his pumps—all of them details of dress
no longer used. They had passed away—before your time, of course
-but------- "

"He dined with you? You dined together, I mean?" I brought him back. I was impatient. The cold I felt increased.

Mantravers shrugged his shoulders: his face seemed to grow paler '.llll.

"He sat at my table," he replied, "for I couldn't help myself." Mis voice went lower than ever, and he looked over his shoulder. "I told the waiter to lay another place, and while that was being done we talked. He talked, rather."

"Of course, you remembered then gradually? The talk brought I ■ i 111 back?"

Again he shook his head. "That's the odd part of it. The feeling (if familiarity, of knowing him quite well, grew stronger and stronger, vcl never fulfilled itself. It got no further. Something in my mind deliberately concealed him from me. Kept him hidden. You have guessed, of course, already. But I didn't—till the end." A perceptible shiver ran through his body. "All I knew was that while he talked I was longing and longing to get rid of him, hoping he would go, wondering what I could do to bring this about, but listening all the I ime to what he said—as though I couldn't help myself and had to listen."

He stopped and took a gulp of his whisky. I asked what kind of things the unwelcome, half-recognised guest talked about. What did he say? It was plain that my cousin wanted to keep this back, while eager at the same time to tell it. He betrayed a touch of embarrassment, of awkwardness, almost of shyness.

"Well, sort of personal things," he brought it out at length hesitatingly, "said no one gave better advice than I did, it was a privilege to talk to me, that I had helped him once, and that now he could clo the same for me—and owed it to me. That was what I disliked so —owed it to me—because—because our troubles were similar. That, he repeated more than once, was why he was able to come at all."

He raised his glass again, but did not drink.

"It was then," he whispered almost, "that was the first time, I mean, I began to feel jumpy."

"Jumpy!" To tell the truth, I felt jumpy myself as I listened.

The strange maturity, the sudden growth in myself already referred to, began to work in me, bringing a sharper, deeper insight with it, so that I knew, as with a flash of clairvoyance, that Mantravers himself was in some kind of personal trouble. Abruptly, this revelation came, a sense of discomfort with it, for I understood that he was both anxious to tell it and not to tell it. I waited. In the end, of course, he told it, and it involved a woman, money, honour, and all in a distinctly unpleasant way that heaped appearances—though he had done no dishonourable act—against him. Only the bare outline was given to me, the outline of a very nasty fix.

"To my utter astonishment," Mantravers went on, "the fellow referred to this, as though he knew all about it. He did know all about it. It amazed me; I was flabbergasted. I felt as if hypnotised, for he had a dreadfully insistent way with him, so that I had to listen. And my eyes kept wandering to a dull red mark he had in his right temple. I had not noticed it before. It seemed to glow. It fascinated me, that mark, and from time to time the fellow's hand, as he passed it across his forehead, let his fingers trail and linger over it, deliberately, I could have sworn. He saw my eye on it. 'I've been waiting a long time for this,' he said. 'It was difficult to arrange, but now you're in much the same boat I was in once; now I can give you advice so that you'll understand.' A sort of icy smile ran over his face. 'You see,' he added, 'by rights I ought to have stayed here another twenty-five years. My life would have run to fifty-one.' And with that he abruptly stood up to go. The red mark on his temple glowed and spread a little. I got up too. 'Meet me in my house to-morrow,' he said, 'meet me at six o'clock,' a strange compelling power in his voice and fixed staring eyes. 'I shall be there waiting for you.' With that he turned, I saw the red mark flame out and die away, I saw him walk across the floor between the tables and go out of the restaurant."

It was only at this final moment, my cousin assured me, his voice a whisper now, that he recognised de Frasne, as though the shutter that all this time had deliberately hidden him from memory was lifted, also deliberately. Yet no shock accompanied the revelation. His attention, rather, was drawn to quite normal things about him—the waiter, though he had laid a second cover, as bidden, was hovering near, saying something, asking, indeed, whether he should bring the soup since perhaps the expected gentleman was not coming after all, and a moment later serving the single plate and clearing away the second unwanted cover.

I sat silent for some minutes, finding nothing to say, wishing only that my cousin would remove his fixed stare from my face, and relieved when at last he did so and raised his glass and drank. Yet a lot of things crowded jostling in my mind during that brief silence. While resisting with all my might the shivers down my spine, my main I bought, the one that obsessed me chiefly, was, oddly enough, not the wild, forbidding story itself, but that other, almost equally sinister legend about my cousin's personal appearance. His story bewildered me beyond anything I could understand, of course, but it was this point of his physical preservation that for some reason kept intruding dominatingly, forcing its way past other thoughts and feelings. That lie actually looked, and was, a whole generation younger than he had I lie right to be, that he had evaded, as it were, the march and decay of something like twenty-five years, that those missing years lay in wait for him, ready to pounce, and that this period was just about what de Frasne would have lived had he not killed himself—it was impossible and outrageous ideas of this kind that whirled through my mind in such a torrent that I felt as though I were going mad. I made a violent effort to get myself in hand. Mantravers' eyes were off me for a moment while he raised his glass, but as he drank, his stare fixed mc again over the tumbler's rim. I remember shaking myself free, shaking myself, as it were, mentally and physically, opening my mouth lo speak.

Mantravers was before me, however. "I'm going to the house," he said quietly, his voice no longer whispering. "I shall keep the appointment. I must, you see."

It gave me a shock to hear him, but his next words brought back another thing I dreaded more—the long cold shuddering down my spine.

"I want you to come with me—in case I go."

It was the last word that made the shudder repeat itself, and so uncontrollably that my hand was trembling as I lifted my own glass. That "go" was for some reason awful, so that I dared not question even. . . .

Mantravers had my promise before I left his flat, though it took him the best part of an hour to obtain it.

The turmoil in my young mind is understandable without detailed description. England was at war with Germany, I was in the Army, my regiment absorbed my thoughts . . . For a couple of hours Mantravers had torn my interest away to his own amazing story, but the moment I left him the war and its immediate personal claims returned. I cursed myself for having given that promise. At the same time I was gripped by the unusual tale. I had a deep respect for my cousin. If his reputation, with its semi-legendary atmosphere of suggesting the impossible and supernatural, made me uneasy in his presence, his personality impressed me to a point that made me feel he was not quite as other men are. He-was un-ordinary in some peculiar way, extremely gifted, of course, as well; I knew his courage; I looked up to him. His invitation probably flattered me into the bargain . . . I was a little scared, to tell the truth, rather as a schoolboy might be scared, and the idea occurred to me to get in touch with Dr. Vronski, his friend and companion in adventure. I felt the need of advice. Time, however, made this out of the question. I expected to get my army orders any moment.

In the end I kept my promise, kept the appointment punctually.

And, once again, the first thing that impressed me when we met in the club was his uncommon, even uncanny, youthfulness. I swear he might have been my Captain. I mention this particularly because of what came later, if a good deal later, and that it should have struck me so vividly that at first it ousted my thoughts and fears of the adventure to follow is worth emphasis. Coming straight from a feverish, excited day full of thoughts about kit, orders, fighting, France, even about being killed, I found myself registering first this conviction, this positive certainty, that he had somehow managed to evade a long toll of years. His air and attitude, his very atmosphere, conveyed this ridiculous assurance in a way I cannot describe, though the unwelcome shiver it caused in my spine is easily told. A moment later, then, I found myself, instantly and unaccountably, swept up into his mood, into his stream of thought and feeling, so that this world's affairs, even a war with Germany, seemed somehow of less account than what he had afoot. His face, curiously unlined and young, was also distinctly pale, there was a shrinking in his manner. Had I not known his courage, I should perhaps have credited him with what we youngsters called "cold feet."

"I'm obliged to you," he remarked quietly, "for being so punctual. But I knew you would not fail me. It's rather out of your categories, you see," he added after a slight hesitation, "this proposed visit of mine." What he meant precisely, God only knows: I only know myself that I was aware of a queer pang as of something that both attracted and repelled me with a certain violence—by which I mean, perhaps, that I both understood yet did not understand. It was the part of me that understood that attracted me.

We set out on foot at once for a walk of a mile or two to de Frasne's
house in Bayswater. All these years it had remained empty, apparently
neither sold nor rented. The region, prosaic and respectable, reassured
me, for how could anything "unearthly" happen in Bayswater? He
had the key, he mentioned. And the only other remark he made
during that walk of ours over half an hour was a curious one, uttered
with breaks and at intervals moreover, for I said nothing: "If what I
think is true," came in that low voice that again rather gave me the
creeps, "young de Frasne . . . since his death . . . has been in other
time and space . . . When he said that he had been waiting for me
... it was really I who . . . had been waiting for him . . ." And
then suddenly, as I made no comment, he raised his voice almost to
a shout that made me start. "You follow me?" he cried. I managed a
reply of sorts. I was following, of course. "I didn't mean literally," he
explained, lowering his voice; "I meant—do you understand?" My
face, doubtless, gave my answer clearly enough. "No, no, how could
you?" he went on, half to himself. "You've never transcended human
experience, so you couldn't. Naturally, you couldn't. You only know
time in a line, as past, present, future. Vronski and I have known it
. . . otherwise ... in two dimensions, two at least ... A changed
consciousness—that's the trick, you see—can function in different
time . . . elsewhere and otherwise----- "

A sudden flash came to me, so that I stopped him on the pavement.

"Living backwards or forwards, you mean?" I cried.

He stared at me with a kind of exultation. I remember the pallor of his skin, the brightness in his eyes. "I imagine parallel is the right, the better word," he said, with a kind of odd breathlessness, and then he added quickly, "I felt sure—I always knew—you had it in you—somewhere. Death of unexpected kind, self-inflicted, before the natural moment, I mean . . . and I showed him the way . . . would make this possible probably ..."

His voice died away into undistinguishable phrases mumbled below his breath. We hurried on. I grunted, stared, and mopped my face. There was only one horror in me—that he would explain more clearly what was in him. I went ahead of him, going faster and faster.

We reached the street, he found the number, we stopped outside an empty house that showed distinct evidence of long neglect, smothered in boards and signs of house-agents. Mantravers went up the eight steps, I following him. He put the key in the door, opened it, then handed me the key.

He gave me a searching look, a sort of frozen smile on his lips, his pallor very marked. "You needn't come in with me," he whispered, "and you needn't lock the door. Keep the key. I'm going in alone. I think I know what I'm in for," he added, "but remember, if I'm right in my conjecture, no one need look for me. I shall, at any rate, be here."

He looked me straight in the eyes, and his skin was white as linen. He was not frightened. He struck me as a man in a dream, but an awful, icy dream that shattered ordinary experience. The door banged behind him. I stuck my ear close and listened intently. I heard his footsteps clearly as they went across the carpetless hall, then up the wooden stairs, then along a landing, fainter and fainter, after which came silence. I found myself in a shudder, standing on the outer steps, trembling all over, excited beyond words, my heart positively thumping, my forehead wet with perspiration. I waited some fifteen minutes. There was not a sound from inside the house. The traffic went past noisily. It was already after sunset, the dusk falling. I decided to go in. I put in the key, pushed the door open and walked cautiously inside. I closed the door behind me.

Daylight still hung about in palish patches, but there were shadows too. The hall gaped as though about to utter, but no sound came. Peering into two large empty unfurnished rooms, I went slowly upstairs, the stairs he had trodden just before me, along the deserted landing, passing from failing light across little gulfs of shadow. Everything gaped, gaped with emptiness, dust lay all over, decay, neglect, cobwebs, silence, vacancy, motionless air and musty odours—otherwise nothing. All windows everywhere were closed and fastened. I felt my skin crawl with goose-flesh, and the hair moved on my scalp. I persisted. I searched every single room, even the attics and the kitchen and scullery below. I called aloud. I waited, listening. I stared and watched. Taking quick steps, I then paused, every sense alert, intent. I called again, but no answer came. No hint of a human presence was discoverable. I searched, as the saying is, from roof to cellar. That I found the courage to do so seems to me now the proof of my intensely alive curiosity, even of something in me that believed, and hoped, and perhaps expected—to find a clue. . . .

Half an hour later I stood on the outer steps again in the evening air, the street now draped with dusk turning towards night. I decided I must find Dr. Vronski. I must see him at once, without delay. He, rather than the police, was the one to be informed. But at my rooms I found peremptory orders that admitted of no delay or compromise. I left England a few hours later, the key still in my pocket, the door it belonged to unlocked. There had just been time for me to send a hasty letter to Dr. Vronski giving the facts as I knew them, and for a word of reply to reach me: "No cause for anxiety. I've heard from S. M. Do your job—but don't forget him." With this measure of relief —for I should otherwise have thought that Mantravers had shot himself or leaped from a window to his death—I crossed the Channel, an insignificant unit in that heroic B.E.F. Since Vronski had "heard from him," he was still alive—somewhere.

What happened to men's minds during those four years lies, of course, beyond easy understanding—by those who never experienced the strains and stresses they were subject to. Any man capable of going over the edge went over it. For myself, I cannot say. After a year's anguish, tension, suffering that I swear lie beyond human expression in words, I was taken prisoner, and for the next three years I languished in a German prison camp. Nothing can extenuate or excuse the inhuman horror of a bad German prison camp. My own was of the worst. Any prisoner who survived the process that stunned, stupefied, brutalised his soul had in him something unusual. The life taught him to search the very marrow of his soul's bones to find relief from daily and nightly torture of excruciating kind.

My point here is that, while I could not honestly find myself unusual in any way, I did find relief; and I found a good deal of this relief in speculating about escape—but I mean escape in space and time. Any real relief inside that barbed wire had to be of mental or spiritual kind, imaginative if you will. The point is that I found it to some extent in speculating about the wild ideas of Vronski and Man-travers. My mind, quite possibly, went a bit over the edge, as I called it above, though I cannot judge of that.

My speculations, such as they were, began after a letter I received from Dr. Vronski: "You will like to know about your cousin," it ran briefly, also disconnectedly, since the censor's attentions had maimed it badly. "The police gave up the search long ago. The Courts have given leave now to assume him dead. But I know he is . . . not dead . . . conceivably within reach even. He is not unhappy, nor is he happy, for he is different. I am not in communication with him, but I know . . . alive and well . . . will come back when you come back . . . you, so to speak, the point in our space and time . . . point he left at . . . Shown the way by de Frasne into other conditions. He is, for the moment, elsewhere and otherwise ... for him literally for a moment only. If this reaches you, do not worry . . . think about it only ... no help from you needed, but sympathetic thought of most concentrated kind can keep open . . ." and the letter closed thus abruptly as though the censor rather late in the day imagined a code.

I had years of "sympathetic thought," stimulated by fierce mental and physical anguish of distinctly "concentrated" kind.

Let us leave it at that. . . .

Mantravers had disappeared, leaving not a wrack behind. Hi presto! and the fellow was gone. He vanished—into ,an empty and unfurnished house. He was just over sixty when he went, and he was just over sixty when he returned. I was present when he returned and I can testify. I knew him before and after. The clothes he went in were the clothes he came back in—an everyday tweed suit with a blue bow tie. He had been away for over four years. He came into view again, re-emerged into our ordinary three-dimensional categories, into our ordinary life and world that is,"precisely and exactly as he left it— almost. Changes of a kind there were, but to describe them here would be to anticipate unduly. They shall be told in their proper place and sequence. . . .

Other letters from Vronski reached me in my prison camp, though most of them, since they dealt with "escape," were too censored to be intelligible. A book or two came as well, articles and pamphlets, undoubtedly sent by him. My mind, whether "over the edge" or not, being neither mathematical nor metaphysical, made little headway with them, though I read—waded through them rather—with undeniable interest and excitement. Other cases of "total disappearance" were discussed and analysed, and such cases, apparently, were not so rare as I had imagined. There were certain places, certain spots of loneliness on the world's surface, regions of wild and hostile desolation, regions avoided rather by commonplace humanity, where such queer "vanishings" had occurred too frequently to be normally explained, and my mind, "ignorant but open," simple certainly, struggled with these strange and semi-marvellous accounts, accounts, moreover, painfully documented with names and dates and other evidence we usually accept as honest.

Such disappearances, however, hardly applied, I felt, to a Bayswater street and a dwelling-house plastered with agents' boards. It was the deeper, more philosophical articles that held my interest chiefly, the writers who suggested that "escape" from the limited life we know was possible, desirable as well. Life, declared one writer, was nothing but a prison-house, cage, and we were wise to admit frankly that it was horrible. We were prisoners in it, slaves, caught helplessly by the bars of space and time which were our ghastly limitations. Yet a way of escape, "though few there be that find it," offered, the A B C of this way being to "go against nature," since nature kept us stupefied within our bars. The great majority, of course, dominated by the herd-instinct, obeyed the shibboleths of the herd. These never could, because they never wanted to, escape. Only the few who resisted the stunning, deadening influence of the herd, of nature, need ever dare to make the attempt. . . .

A strange new world of possibilities opened before me. I did not close my mind against them, but merely wondered, dreamed, and speculated. Did I actually make practical attempts, following the guarded hints and clues, attempts to practise in my own being the amazing rules laid down? I had these awful, bitter hours to fill as best I could. Physical efforts were not available, I must fill my life mentally, imaginatively, or else, as we described it among ourselves, and as I saw happening daily, hourly, among my fellow-prisoners, "go potty." My long sleepless nights, my days of endless anguish, sought what alleviation they could find. . . .

Another dimension in space was easier to conceive, I found, than another dimension in time. Moreover, among my fellow-prisoners, was a Professor of sorts, a Russian, to whom I talked a good deal, and he tried to explain the space business to me with at least a glimmering of success. He showed me how a fellow could be in two places at once, in London, say, and Calcutta. Taking a sheet of paper from some old letter, he marked Calcutta at one end and London at the other. He told me to imagine people living on the surface of this sheet, people who knew only length and breadth—a world of two dimensions. "Of height, remember," he warned me in his broken English, "they know nothing. They have no perception of height—cannot even think of it. They are two-dimensional beings in a two-dimensional world." Well, I understood that all right.

"A fellow in their world," he explained, "can be in London or in Calcutta, but he cannot be in both." It was obvious enough.

Then he bent the sheet of paper. He doubled it together, so that the spot of London and the spot of Calcutta lay cheek by jowl. They coincided.

"In bending the sheet," he added, "I have made it pass through height, of course." I agreed.

"Yet, in the result, Calcutta and London lie together. The man in Calcutta is in London too. He is in two places at once."

We glared at one another. "It is only an analogy, of course," he reminded me, "and it has the fallacy that all analogies must hold."

I got an inkling of what he meant, but when he talked in similar fashion about time, I could not follow him. It gave me a sick headache merely.

From the books I read and the thoughts I thought, I gathered anyhow that brains, tongues and pens have speculated freely enough about these very rare "total disappearances." I gathered likewise that such speculations were somewhat negligible, and that only a mere handful who had made practical experiments—among them undoubtedly Vronski and my cousin—could offer anything of tangible value. Among the sparse elect, none the less, I caught strange whispers. A notion grew in the deepest part of me that another dimension in space could explain this wiping out of a physical body, and that such a one, dropping away into a direction at right angles to the three we know so Well, drops obviously and naturally clean out of sight. He passes into a region no sense of ours can ever plumb. Out of our known, familiar space he has dropped elsewhere—and otherwise as well, since a new direction in space involves necessarily a new dimension in time.

Time, as we know it, runs forward only in a line; but in two dimensions it would run backwards, or parallel as well. Not only could he be in two places at once, but he could be also in two times at once. He could do two things—two things otherwise mutually self-exclusive—at once.

"At any given moment," said my fellow-prisoner, "you have a choice of doing several things. Of these you choose one. Actually, you might choose any of the others. You select one, however, and do it. That one thing actualises."

I nodded, as much as my approaching headache allowed.

"Now,.listen: In time of more than one dimension you could choose more than one thing. You could do several things at once— and they all would actualise. . . ."

At which point my sick headache usually developed suddenly, so that my friend continued to talk without my understanding.

I acquired, at any rate, a sort of smattering of comprehension.

"Anyone escaping into other time and space," he finished later, "would come back, you see, at the point he left, even if years of our time had passed meanwhile—years or a few minutes only. . . ."

Such explanations, I found, supported themselves, loosely enough, with the jargon of Relativity. Einstein, the magician thinker, was called in to help. To me it remained a "line of speculation," than which the sober mind would say no more.

Mantravers, at any rate, disappeared . . . and since he vanished when war was declared, and reappeared shortly after the Armistice, there were those who sneered that he had been in hiding. This was untrue, absurd as well. No more patriotic Englishman ever lived. Nor was his courage questionable. The date of his going and returning had nothing to do with the War. The Great War, indeed, was almost a trivial item in his strange experience, and his disappearance, I incline to think, was enforced, and singularly enforced.

It was January 1919 when I found myself in London again. My intention, backed by a deep instinct, was to go back to the house where Sydney Mantravers had left me standing on the steps: to enter the building, if still unoccupied; to walk through all its rooms and passages again. I wished to do this alone, and to do it before I had spoken with Dr. Vronski, or even seen him. Vronski's talk and information could come later. I kept my return secret from him.

If I never quite explained or justified this deep instinct even to myself, I recognised that no mere morbid curiosity lay in it anywhere. Clearest in my mind was the desire to make this visit and inspection before I became immersed again in the world of ordinary everyday affairs, that is, before some inner mood or attitude acquired in my years of solitude had dissipated. During those prison years of introspection, thought, speculation, even of experiment as well, something had come to life in me that contact with the bustling outer world, I knew, must smash to pieces. It was as though I had dreamed of another order of existence, had even fringed the perception of entirely new categories. Two sets of values, at any rate, appeared in some depth of my being that was only accessible to me with the greatest difficulty and effort. I was aware of them, no more than that; the slightest mistake, of clumsiness or stupidity, on my part would send them plunging for ever beyond my reach. This extremely delicate balance I perceived. The disappearance of Mantravers was concerned with the set of values I had dreamed of, possibly just begun to understand, to acquire even, in my bitter years of prison life. My instinct was to visit the house while this still remained and before its fading, already in progress, resulted in complete forgetfulness.

Did I expect to see him too, actually to see some figure or outline of the man who had disappeared over four years ago and was now legally dead? I cannot truthfully say, although I believe some uncanny, rather awful hope lurked deep down in me. ... I reached London at noon, my return to England, my presence in town, a well-kept secret; not wasting a minute, I was walking up the Bayswater side-street by the afternoon, the January daylight already fading, and it must have been close on four o'clock when the house came into view, plastered, I noticed, still with agents' boards, and therefore unlet, unoccupied. The stained and dirty window-panes had no blinds, the patchy walls showed no signs of recent paint, the air of neglect and disuse were the same as before, only more marked. The key, in case of need, the very key my cousin had handed to me himself, was in my pocket, kept carefully all these years. In the pocket of my mackintosh my fingers gripped it tightly, even a trifle feverishly, as though it might somehow melt away and defeat my purpose. I kept feeling it over, indeed, as a man might finger bank-notes to make quite sure he still had them safely.

A definite realisation, moreover, came to me as I walked up the steps—that I was both exhilarated and frightened, and that while the exhilaration contained an immense, a biting curiosity, the fear was partly due to a sudden wave of depression that had come upon me. Was this depression, this lowering of vitality, I remember asking myself, similar to what the two ladies experienced just as they passed the threshold into their unique otherworldly Adventure in Versailles? The vivid detail rose up from my reading in my prison camp. It was certainly not a physical fear, it was perhaps a mental, a spiritual hint of terror, as best I could diagnose it, for the idea appeared that my ordinary equipment of mind and body contained no weapon to help me in what might be coming. Yet a touch of horror I had known before "going over the top" seemed in it too. My hand, at any rate, was trembling as I took the big key and began to fit it into the lock of the front door—at which very moment a noise of tapping on glass somewhere above me made me pause. It sounded like fingers drumming or tapping faintly on a window-pane. Startled, I looked up quickly, and there, at a window on the second floor, two storeys above, I saw a face peering down at me through the dusty pane, a face I recognised, the' face of my cousin, Sydney Mantravers. Looking over his shoulder, and also staring down at me, was the outline of a second face, but a face that was wholly strange to me. I had just time to note that it wore a small moustache, when both the faces withdrew sharply backwards from the window so that they were no longer visible, and it was in this same instant that my fingers, fumbling with the key automatically, discovered that the door was not locked at all but was indeed already open into the hall.

It is astonishing what thoughts, and how trivial ones at that, start up in the mind as it meets an unusual shock or crisis, for at this moment, when an unearthly acceptance and a vehement incredulity clashed together, the one definite impression I could recognise was— that youthful appearance. This flashed over me even as the faces of both withdrew, and it was not the visage of a possible de Frasne, dead these thirty years and more, that made my flesh creep, but the unquestionable assurance that Mantravers, whom I knew to be over sixty, looked hardly forty. The amazing fact that he had "disappeared" foi an interval of four years seemed left out of account at this instant; it was the uncanny air of having missed decay for a generation that leaped back into my mind with horror. Then, before I knew what my shaking legs were doing, they had taken me automatically into the hall, and the front door closed behind me with a bang. Standing there in the semi-darkness, it was all I could do to hold myself together, and I mean my "self" precisely, for at first everything I was accustomed to hold on to in a time of stress seemed wavering like a jelly that must any instant dissolve. To hold myself steady, to keep control, was what occupied my mind in that first moment of entering the hall; there was no room in me for anything but this tremendous effort; and in making it, a cold perspiration burst out all over my skin. I only recall that the exhilaration had left me entirely, while the depression had greatly intensified. The curiosity, if of rather an icy kind, remained, but it was fed by a lowering vitality.

The house, as I went in, was very still, no sound audible. It was also dark, all outlines heavily draped, no edges visible. I stood stock-still, shivering and afraid, even unable, to move. I could not stir a foot. There was a queer sense that everything had stopped moving the instant I came in, that a crowd had rushed into hiding, that my arrival was anticipated by a fraction of a second; but this, I knew, was due to imagination only. Actually, nothing but emptiness and vacancy surrounded me. The gloom concealed no living thing.

An unoccupied, unfurnished house at the best of times is a ghostly, even a hostile, place, but this particular one, wrapped in the wintry dusk, turned the perspiration cold against my skin. The conviction that upstairs, perhaps even now watching me, was a man who had been "dead" four years, a companion with him who had left the world by suicide long before him, that this awful pair, hidden among the untenanted rooms above, stood waiting to look me in the eyes, perchance to touch me, ask me questions, reveal their knowledge and their presence—this all gave me a sensation of dread and horror that paralysed my muscles. I stood there as though turned into stone, while the echoes from the banging door rolled on through the series of unoccupied halls and chambers, then died away into a silence that was even worse. Had I seen Mantravers at that moment, heard his desccnding step, or caught the sound of his voice calling me by name, I believe my heart must have stopped dead. Already it was beating like a troubled engine, my breathing difficult as well. Afraid to go forward, afraid to turn back and go out, my shaking body, leaning for support against the wall, stood where it was, my powers of self-control gone all to pieces.

What on earth was I to do next? The answer came unexpectedly. A light flashed suddenly across the ceiling, darting its bright beam swiftly from point to point, and with it came the sound of footsteps. Someone was moving cautiously along the landing above, and the flash came obviously from a shifting electric torch. I slipped back into the comer, every nerve taut with horrified anticipation.

"Who's there?" called a man's voice loudly. "Who is it?"

I made an attempt to answer, but no sound left my throat. The same second the steps quickened, left the upper landing, and began to come down the carpetless stairs. I saw the dark outline of a man shading his eyes with one hand from the glare of a torch he shifted to and fro in front of him. He came down slowly, cautiously, treading each board with care. A dozen steps from the bottom he stopped and turned the full light of the brilliant torch upon me where I crouched in the angle against the wall. I stood helpless in this dazzling blaze, the stream showing me up mercilessly from head to foot, the man who held it of course invisible.

"Oh, it's you!" came a voice of startled surprise. "So you're back in England! That explains it . . ." as the speaker turned the light upon himself, so that I recognised, with a surprise equal to his own, but with a relief he could hardly have guessed, the face and figure of Dr. Vronski.

I could think of nothing to say or do except what I did say and do:

I pointed overhead. "Hush! Hush!" I cried in a stifled whisper.
"He's up there. I've just seen him. He tapped on the window—
beckoned. He's come back, by God--- "

"Who?" he asked, his voice, it seemed to me, strangely calm, his manner quiet and matter of fact, the odd composure of the man adding to my horror.

"Mantravers," I whispered. "I saw him at the window. He tapped. Somebody was with him. Up there on the next floor close behind you."

He did not even turn. He had reached my side by now. His face was close to mine, so that I saw the fierce light shining in his eyes, but there was no excitement in him. Cold and collected as a fish he seemed.

"He is expecting you," he said, as quietly as you please. "The other will not stay—stay here, I mean. He has led him to the point where you are needed. The point you left him at four years ago." His eyes ran over me like a moving flame. "To him—remember if you can— it's not even a minute."

I felt my body slipping down against the wall as though my legs were gone. The whole house, it seemed, was listening to our whispered words. I heard the staircase creak. The rumble of street traffic was audible outside. I caught myself thinking that I would have given my very soul to see an omnibus, a good, everyday red omnibus, a taxi cab, a policeman. What was to come next I dared not even think about. Vronski stood close beside me, our shoulders touching. His unescap-able eyes ran over me in liquid fire. What would he say next? What would he ask of me?

And then a crackling voice rang out upstairs, a voice I knew and recognised. Though a curious distance was in it, yet a distance that could not muffle, it was sharp and distinct. It called my name.

"Come," said Vronski calmly. "You must come up and help him. He is expecting you."

It came over me suddenly that the entire experience was a dream. Things in a dream happened just like this. The sense of surprise, the power of criticism, are absent. Mantravers, Vronski, myself were all figures in a dream. Tire whole business belonged to a dream. I, the dreamer, should presently wake up. Yet while this thought flashed, its opposite, appearing concurrently, flashed with it: that my consciousness, namely, had changed, and that I was beyond the emotions that pertain to normal consciousness. As consciousness changes, grows, the universe it perceives grows and changes with it. . . .

"In a sense that's exactly true," I heard Vronski murmur as we crossed the silent hall, and it did not occur to me as in the least odd that he should know what I was thinking. "We are in a dream-world here and now, a dream condition, a dream civilisation. We are, that is, so little conscious that what we think real is actually hardly more than a dream-state . . ." and his voice died away among the shadows.

I heard this without an atom of surprise, without a tremor of disbelief. Philosophical talk at such a moment! And yet somehow occasioning no astonishment! Obviously, the experience was all a dream.

"He woke up," the voice ran on as we reached the staircase, "and consequently he disappeared. That is, he left our dream-conditions."

I could not quite follow that. I was suddenly stiff with terror too, thinking of the man waiting for us up that dark flight of stairs. It seemed absurd and horrible, comic and tragic, that we should be exchanging philosophical comments at such a moment.

"He became aware of other conditions, though these are about us
always, and only a change in our perceptive apparatus is needed "

I gave a little sharp cry unwittingly, as though the terror had crawled
into my throat, and his voice fell away while he took my arm firmly,
for I had stumbled over the first step as we began to mount the stair
case. "Don't be frightened, don't feel fear, or anything negative," he
concluded, his arm preventing me falling. "Feel sympathy, curiosity,
interest, even scepticism if you like. But don't feel fear," he repeated.
"I have come to this house four times a week ever since he left us. I
have sat here waiting, hoping for hours on end, without result, though
once—once only—I saw de Frasne—rushing—rushing with the speed
of light and through every room and passage simultaneously—rushing,
I tell you, with etheric speed, etheric omnipresence—but of him, no
sign, and I knew at last that only you could get him back, because
you were with him when he went. You are a sign-post, if you like,
the point of departure and so the point of return—of simultaneous
return. Above all, therefore, feel no fear, for fear repels and blocks "

A cry interrupted this amazing flow. It sounded overhead again, in the dark space of the landing. It called my name, but it was fainter than before and held a curious touch of fading distance. We were halfway up the stairs. I stopped dead.

"Answer him, answer," urged Vronski quickly, almost passionately. "Say you're here." And making a great effort, I obeyed.

"I'm here, Sydney, I'm coming to you," my voice rose out of some kind of automatism. "Hold on!" And Vronski, hastening his step, dragged me with him. "Remember," he whispered in my ear, "remember all he says, for he can tell marvellous things, though probably to you only."

We reached the landing, and Vronski flashed his torch along the corridor, flooding it with light, illuminating several doors, a whole series of doors belonging, apparently, to bedrooms, and one of these doors stood open. It was standing ajar. These details showed up with vivid clearness instantly, but it was something else I saw simultaneously that my attention fastened on with immediate horror, although horror is not the accurate word, since the amazement in me—I can only call it an explosion of amazement—was of too vast, too strange a kind to include a negative emotion such as horror. For I saw several figures, a series of them, all moving with great rapidity, moving in the three directions known to us, up, down, across, yet all moving in some incredible manner simultaneously—a figure I recognised, the figure of de Frasne. It is of course impossible to describe, it lies entirely beyond words, beyond our three-dimensional experience, which is all we have. For, in addition to this multiplication of one figure into numerous duplicates, it, or they, were moving in other places than this stretch of illuminated corridor. They moved along other passages, through other rooms on floors upstairs and downstairs, moved up and down between floors and ceilings elsewhere in the house. They were, in fact, all over the building, and in the same instant, while yet the whole series of figures, as I have said, was always one and the same, the figure of de Frasne.

Pages of description cannot make any clearer this instant flash that overwhelmed me with complete conviction. I know what I witnessed, and I know that this certainty of positive knowledge lay in me. No surprise accompanied it, no touch of criticism, as in a dream I accepted it merely as true and possible. There was in me, perhaps, a momentary extension of consciousness, a change of consciousness, that involved some sudden awareness of a changed, extended universe. It went as quickly as it came. I had, in any case, no instant for reflection. The figures vanished. Round the door that was standing ajar, peering at us, fingers gripping the edge, I saw the face of Sydney Mantravers. Vronski saw it too, though whether he had seen de Frasne or not I did not know, and, feeling me shrink back involuntarily, he pulled me sharply, even violently forward, so that together we took half a dozen rapid steps in the direction of the face. I saw the hand that gripped the edge of the door advance; it pushed out; an arm came next; the face, with shoulders behind it, followed; the entire figure pushed into full view. There was a blaze.

"Hold out your hand," Vronski whispered. "Say something. A welcome."

As in a nightmare, I made the effort. My own hand moved out. My voice spoke, made a sound at any rate, a hoarse whisper, half choked with terror: "Here I am, Sydney. Come on—come back to me—back to us."

It seemed to me my mind and senses were registering only certain things of limited kind, and that a whole world of other occurrences going on at the same time about me now passed entirely unrecognised. While aware of their existence, I could not perceive them.

The full-length figure then drove forward at what seemed terrific speed through the now wide-open door. There was a rush, a roar too, I believe, as though a comet swept through space, and I felt my hand grasped in a clutch of ice, while a tremendous blow seemed to strike me, not in the face and chest alone and not outward only, but over my whole body, and somehow inside as well, knocking me backwards as with some gigantic energy behind it. I reeled at the shock. I lost my balance. As I fell against the wall at my back, I saw the face and figure of Mantravers come rushing at me with the speed and power as of some awful projectile. I cannot over-emphasise this impression of appalling speed and power. In the flash of a second it happened. Memory and consciousness then collapsed together simultaneously, but before the darkness swept over me, I caught the laughter of both men on the tail of broken sentences.

". . . too much for him, but I'm here again . . . he's got me out . . . damned idiot to come . . . just going back into sleep once more . . . de Frasne refused . . . enjoying his boyhood too much. . . ."

The words roared past me like a clap of thunder, but the heavy thump I heard was evidently my own body as it reached the floor.

"Hold on—for God's sake don't forget—grip your memory—hold

on to that—tell us all you can---- " I just caught in Vronski's voice as

I sank into oblivion.

Memory, apparently, is but a clumsy, ineffective process. No man can recall accurately the details of the accident that knocked him out. People who claim to remember past lives usually have blank minds about what happened a month ago. At any rate, to remember in a calm moment what occurred in a time of violent stress seems quite impossible. The chief detail I recalled clearly of this amazing scene was that Mantravers looked exactly the same as when I had last seen him four years before, but that his face had a brilliant whiteness and that he was thin to emaciation. Against the surrounding darkness of the landing he looked radiant, he shone, he rushed at me like a stTeam of lightning. And hence, of course, the blaze already mentioned.

His words, the words of Vronski too, held equally clear and definite, audible memories being perhaps more vividly impressed than visual ones. His return to our three-dimensional conditions he regarded thus as a limitation of life and an idiotic one, for it was "falling into sleep again." The glimpse accorded me, moreover, of the conditions he had left, conditions possible to an extended consciousness, were "too much" for me, while de Frasne, being in different time, could choose his period at will, and preferred his "boyhood" years to anything to be found in our world. Yet of those few pregnant words I caught, it was the word "here" that impressed me most. My cousin said "here" as though he had never left or gone away.

It was later that I was able to note and label other changes. . . .

If his clothing betrayed no passage of the years, there were alterations in his appearance that impressed me profoundly. These testified to something, though what this something was I leave to others cleverer than myself. He looked no older, I can swear to that. He still wore, indeed, that air of mighty resistance to the years already mentioned before he vanished, that extraordinary retention of youth, as though the usual decay had hardly touched him for a generation, as though this natural process had been arrested in his physical being. And this resistance to time, even with these four years added, was what struck me as his radiant face rushed at me in that empty house. I have thought later, if a good deal later, that in earlier experiments with Vronski, he had so outdistanced his companion, left him so far behind, that intelligible communication between the two had blocked. Myself, ignorant, untrained, sympathetic and open-minded, he could make contact with, while Vronski, stopped at a certain point, lay out of his reach. . . .

Yet, if he looked no older, he certainly did look different. Different is the word, though to analyse this difference precisely puzzles me completely. Things had passed over him, he had enjoyed, suffered, worn, while it was not, I swear, the physical envelope that had worn, and his body at sixty-four looked forty still. There lay the imprint of signatures on his soul perhaps, of vigils due to an intensity of experience ordinary humans cannot know. I say "perhaps," for it is imagination that interprets such strange markings, and I cannot expect the report of my imagination to pass as evidence. Were I forced to find strictly truthful terms, I should say that Mantravers, during this four years' interlude which left him physically untouched, had inwardly endured things we may hardly guess at, much less define, things possible only to an altered consciousness in altered conditions of space and time, and whether in the body or out of the body, to borrow from an expert, we need not dare to fathom, since they are not knowable to our three-dimensional faculties. Personally, I phrased it thus—that he had been out of the cage we know as life and living. He had escaped.

The fact remains that, of outward physical signs, his face and skin alone at first betrayed him—their incalculable, sweet, fiery radiance. It was this effect of light that had struck me so vividly, even with a burst of horror, before, an instant later, I lost consciousness.

This momentary weakness in myself I have always bitterly regretted, for it robbed me of witnessing any coherent interchange of words and action between Vronski and himself. Its duration was brief, yet long enough for several minutes to have passed, during which we all three reached the hall below. Vronski was chafing my hands. I opened my eyes. "I'm going to find a taxi," he said clearly, as soon as he saw I was all right. "Wait here with your cousin." He placed the hand of Mantravers in my own, and the front door closed behind him with a bang, leaving us together, sitting side by side on two wooden chairs.

Some wholesome magic lay perhaps in that word "taxi," for a measure of control came back to me, though of those next minutes I remember only one thing clearly: that while I searched feverishly, frantically even, for something to say, or rather to ask, a thousand questions boiling in me, Mantravers spoke himself. In the gloom of that dreary hall, lit only by a gleam through the narrow windows from the street, he turned his radiant face towards me. The blaze had dimmed, but it still shone as with an interior lamp.

"I have been awake," he said quietly, sadly, "but I am now falling back into sleep again. I have been elsewhere'and otherwise, but time now separates things idiotically here. I've been out of the cage. . . ."

He said much more, his words, each like a great eagle on the wing, rushing past me, into some region where I could not follow. For understanding left me, even while something just beyond reason beckoned dangerously. With those shining eyes fixed on my own, I felt myself caught up, rapt away, ravished into something beyond experience. Only the feeblest flash of his meaning came—namely, that our earthly consciousness, even at its best and highest, is so limited that it is little better than a state of dream, and that his return to it was like falling into sleep. But before I could frame a single question, much less utter an intelligible comment, the front door had opened again, and I heard Vronski's rather harsh voice calling: "The taxi's here. Come on!"

Mantravers was legally dead; in the eyes of authority he had no existence; he could neither be taxed, fined, nor arrested and imprisoned. He lived—went to bed, rather, and stayed there—in Dr. Vronski's house in Westminster, and to me, ignorant, stupid, scared, but "open-minded," was allotted by Vronski the task of watching over him. "He'll talk to you, at least he may," said Vronski, emphasising "you" and "may," "if he talks at all. Not," he added bluntly, resentfully a trifle too, "because you know anything, or will even understand what he says, but because you're a link of sorts, a'link with his dream-existence here, you see, before he left."

I was too uneasy to feel flattered, as I listened, but it did occur to me to ask why he, Vronski, couldn't be that link himself. His reply only set my mind going in whirls and whorls. He couldn't, he explained, because he, Vronski, was still in the state of sleep—what most people called life—whereas Mantravers had been "awake for a long time, for twenty-five years or more. I woke up for moments, but I never could hold it. I dropped back again into—into this," and he waved his arms over London, as it were. "He left me more than a quarter of a century ago, a whole generation. But you," he looked hard at me with a bitter envy in both voice and eyes, "though you don't know it"—he hesitated a moment—"are more awake than I— for longer periods anyhow." He turned away with a half angry shrug. "Anyhow, he may talk to you, and if he does, treasure his words like gold. I can't get a syllable out of him."

He gazed at me with that horrible envy in his eyes. It made me shiver to hear him, and though I longed to ask him about those twenty-five years, missing years as it were, I could not bring myself to do so.

"You have," he went on more quietly, "an amazing privilege—a chance in a thousand million. Think of it—a man, a human, who has tasted other time and space. You may hear something about existence outside our categories altogether. Make a note of—of everything, especially of what you don't understand. The more it contradicts our logic and experience, the more valuable it may be. Nonsense, sheer nonsense, here will be right, remember. . . ."

Much more in similar vein he impressed upon me, as he installed me in the dressing-room leading out of the "sick man's" chamber in his luxurious house, the very house, I knew, where he and my cousin had carried on their audacious experiments of years ago. I listened, listened closely, saying hardly anything myself, while in my mind, or in some part of me that somehow remained aloof, unfrightened, the calmest of calm spectators, I was perfectly aware that Vronski and I were talking in a dream, and that our three-dimensional consciousness was little better than a dream-state. The journey in the taxi, to go back a bit, left few clear impressions in me; I was too scared, too utterly nonplussed at the moment, to focus attention or reflection. Mantravers, emaciated, limp and so strangely shining, lay back in his comer beside his former friend. He rarely spoke a word. I watched him as I might have watched a nightmare figure. This dream-texture wove itself through the whole journey.

The taxi, I remember, drove dangerously fast, so that, as in the cinema stunt-pictures, crashes which seemed unavoidable were just avoided by a hair's breadth and the stream of vehicles rushed past us in a dreadful sequence. I was clutching for safety at everything within reach, when my cousin spoke. "Why doesn't the man start?" he asked impatiently. "He's got three directions to choose from, hasn't he, and the house can't come to us—down here, at any rate, it can't. I'm there already anyhow, if he only knew it." He gave a queer little gulp of laughter, turning to me with a look that set my shivers going again. "I knew it, knew it perfectly, you see, before I came back into this, but I'm losing it now, it's going again." His piercing, fiery eyes were full upon me; he drew a profound sigh of weariness, of disgust, of pity. "The cage is about me, the stupid, futile cage. It's time that does it, it's your childish linear time, time in a single line. In such a limited state it's not even being awake,

just trivial dreaming, almost death---- " and the voice died off into

a whisper. He closed his eyes, leaning back into his comer.

I saw Vronski clutch him. "Remember," Vronski shouted, "try to remember! You're back in three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time now—and with me. I'm Vronski—Nicholas Vronski— your old friend. You remember our talks, our speculations, our experiments!"

There was no response, not even a turn of the head. But one of those flashes I had actually no right to came to me, and I understood that Mantravers, back now in conditions he had long escaped, found himself so caged and limited that he felt helpless. After the intensity, the difference, the power and liberty he had known, the experiences of our existence were as the unreal phantasmagoria of a dream. "It's all leaving me," he murmured once. "I'm forgetting, forgetting. It's awful, awful. It was always difficult to hold it. I can't hold it now. Yet I had a flash, a minute—four years, as you think it here."

The taxi, escaping a hundred deaths, stopped suddenly, and then Vronski, grabbing my arm painfully hard as we got out, whispered something about "get all he says, make notes, remember every word, hold on to him," and somehow we were, all three, inside the house.

Such is my brief recollection, half hazy, half vivid, of that frightful journey. So perturbed and upset I was that I only vaguely recall that Vronski provided a meal of sorts, put Mantravers to bed, and fixed me up in the dressing-room with only a door between. It all happened with the rapidity of that cinema stunt-picture almost; these little details of preparation, eating a meal, providing me with pyjamas, paper and pencil, and a dozen other necessary matters, all went past with extraordinary swiftness, as though, perhaps, I hardly noticed them attentively enough to take them in. It seemed but a few minutes, when he stood at the door, giving me final injunctions before he left me alone for the night. "I'm best out of sight, in the background anyhow," he whispered. "Ring for all you want. My manservant is used to anything at any hour. I must go now. I must notify the authorities, of course, for one thing. Keep your door ajar, and watch and listen. Be ready. Your position, your privilege, your duty . . ." The words poured out feverishly jumbled, there was so much he wanted to say. He shrugged his shoulders, and adding that he would look in again at midnight, he was gone.

He did come back at midnight, a couple of hours later, and entering my room on tiptoe, seemed relieved to hear that there had been no waking yet, hardly a movement of the sleeping body even. "He may sleep for hours," he told me, "for days, even for weeks, like others before him. But I doubt it. His case is not of that sort. He'll wake up right enough before too long, and you must be the first person he sees."

My shudder was noticeable evidently. He eyed me keenly, alive to my exhaustion. "You—you will stick it, won't you?" he asked, almost piteously.

I looked into those beseeching eyes. The pallid face, wasted with intense desire, distraught, scarred by experiments of nameless kind, the face of a man who had not spared himself in the search for what he deemed knowledge, made an almost violent appeal. The pain, too, was there, the sense of loss, the anguish due to being robbed of refreshment poignantly expected, earned—robbed by another whom, moreover, he considered, at the least, unworthy.

I asked a few questions. He answered them. It all still seemed to me a dream of marvellous, even supernatural, sort, a dream I could only partially recover. It seems so to-day, indeed, more than ever.

"I'm scared," I whispered.

"You well may be," he whispered back.

I gave my promise, if fearfully, yet at the same time eagerly as well.

"Scared," that little trivial word, was the one that hung echoing in the air during the hours of my long vigil. I dreaded the awakening, yet longed for it. My mind was a turmoil. Contradictions raged in me. Mantravers, they said, had of course been in hiding all these years —yet his very clothes, hanging over the chair, denied it. It was all a tricky hallucination of my own mind—my recent war experiences denied that still more decisively. The alternative was staggering, more than my faculties could hold or deal with—that my cousin, sleeping calmly in that bed, had left our space and time for a period of four years, and that before this complete disappearance, as' a preliminary to it, by way of training possibly, he had escaped our time, while still occupying our space, for a far longer period, for some twenty-five years, an entire generation. When he woke up in that bed across the floor, woke out of this interval of readjustment which was an earthly sleep, he might tell me something, things of unexampled, fearful interest—me, because though ignorant I was open-minded, not knowing enough even to have prejudices. . . .

With books I could not read, with pencil and writing-pad in hand, I sat peering through the half-open door. I could easily see the emaciated, shining face, the collar of blue pyjamas round the neck, the nose buried in the pillow, the counterpane rising and falling with the steady breathing. No other movement came, no sound, no gentle snoring even; he might pass his life away, it seemed to me, dying in his sleep. He looked as if he could never wake, as if he did not mean to, certainly did not want to, wake. What dying might mean to him, I dared not think. Once I crept in on tiptoe, and looked closer, standing within two feet of the bed. God—that strange radiance! Even the transparent eyelids glowed, as though the eyeballs underneath looked through at me. I felt "seen through," my very soul examined. I returned again and again, stealthily, as though irresistibly attracted, fascinated. I hoped he would never wake, I hoped he would. I sat with nerves on edge, with senses painfully alert, too frightened to feel fear.

The hours passed slowly. No sound penetrated from the London streets. It seemed the silence deepened to something beyond silence. Beneath the surface the turmoil in my mind ran helter-skelter among a thousand thoughts and pictures, playing pitch-and-toss with my years in the prison camp, with my reading, with my own strange experiments in escape. ... I wondered, wondered, for wonder seemed the single attitude that held calm and steady in me. For the hundredth time I went over my brief talk with Vronski just before he left, the few wild questions I had put, the startling replies. Incoherent and almost childish that exchange seemed now. Was there anything in particular I should look for, I had asked, apart from noting what my cousin might say? And Vronski, eyeing me hungrily, had hesitated a moment, as though reflecting deeply. "A change," he had said at length, "an alteration—of unexpected kind—a sudden —possibly a very shocking one." Into my mind leaped the idea of mania. "No, not that," came the reply, reading my thoughts again. "I mean that its suddenness, its rapidity—you might find shocking." It was nothing mental, I realised. "Oh, physical then?" I asked with a little gasp impossible to repress, and he had nodded, the expression on his face dreadful almost, because a queer superior smile lay mingled in it. "He might appear suddenly—rather—different," his words came slowly. I guessed faintly at what his allusion meant perhaps. I recalled, all in a flash, the stories, my own casual observations in the past, the fact that for a generation Mantravers had not grown older, and the unnatural horror of it came back to me like ice. And Vronski's slow words were still dropping from his lips in whispers. "The stresses and energies where he has been lie beyond anything we can know or imagine. Their removal here may result in abrupt collapse of even dreadful kind. The price must be paid—paid back!—in our time, of course." His voice became almost inaudible. "It may be sudden," I just caught, "what we call sudden."

The talk ran in a ceaseless circle through my mind, round and round, till any meaning it might have held was lost, as I sat there watching the sleeper's bed. My armchair was against the open door. The silence deepened, the cold increased, the city traffic lay dead, no birds awake, no wind astir. No hint of sleep came near me. If he wakened—should I dare to ask the thousand questions raging fn my mind, dare to frame a single one of them? He did not stir an inch, he did not turn over, trunk and head and limbs lay motionless, and I doubt if my eyes ever left his face for more than a few seconds at a time.

So long this silence and immobility continued that, beginning to feel nothing would ever happen again, I glanced at my wrist-watch, noting that it was close upon four in the morning, the hour when human vitality sinks to its lowest ebb, and thinking that daylight must presently come filtering through the blinds. I can swear that my eyes did not leave his face for longer than ten seconds at most, but it was in this very brief interval I became aware of a sudden movement in the still room. I started, gave a jerk as though a bullet had passed through me, while my questions fled like a flock of terrified sheep. The movement was of the slightest, but it was real—the opening of his eyelids. Mantravers was staring at me across the floor. And accompanying this movement was a low sound that came at me like a bell—his voice.

Caution, circumspection, sensible action, all forsook me in that instant, and fear went with them: memory of detailed instruction vanished utterly; caught in a wave of passionate and overwhelming curiosity, I sprang to my feet, obeying instinctively my dominating impulse. I was across the strip of intervening carpet in a second, I rushed up to the bed; with barely a foot between our two faces, I plumped out my first question, regardless of all else. It was what, above all, I wanted to know, apparently, for it burst out like an automatic explosion.

"How did you do it, Sydney—keep young—arrest age and decay, I mean, for twenty-five years on end?"

The question had spurted spontaneously out of my "subconscious," of course, where it had lain so long, perplexingly unanswered; for I had no thought of asking it till then, and there were others I had meant to put.

Those strange electric eyes gazed into mine. He spoke, and his voice again was like a bell: "A man in his own place," he answered with a curious gentleness, "is the ruler of his fate. And I found mine."

"How—how did you get there?" came from my lips, stupidly enough.

"By leaving—this—this imagery." He made a slight, even a tiny, gesture with his arm, yet it was as though he swept away the house, London, England itself and all it stood for in ordinary experience. Imagery! I almost felt myself swept with it into something beyond all trivial, confined and relative conditions I had hitherto mistaken for reality and life. Though my mind and emotions were a boiling cauldron, little clear and steady in them, another question rising to the surface shot out of its own accord.

"Our knowledge, then—science-------- "

An extraordinarily sweet expression stole upon his face. He gently shook his head. "Unreal," rang the voice, though fainter than before, "and part of the dream we ourselves create. The How is nothing— mere effects. Here we can dream effects only. Knowledge and reality can be known only in the Why—the world of causes. . . ."

On the last three words the bell-like quality grew fainter, fading from his voice, the eyelids dropped slowly over the terrific eyes. I searched for one more question among the hundreds I longed to ask, but found no single word. He lay quite still again, apart from the gentle rise and fall of the body that breathed equably in what men call physical sleep. The queer notion came to me that he had not really wakened at all, that Mantravers in his totality had certainly not been there, nor gazed at me, nor spoken, but that only a fraction of his being, using the familiar terms of limited human intelligence, had brushed my mind in passing. True enough, of course, the fragment that was spoken, for even I grasped that, and classifying effects can bring no knowledge of reality. Science, which explains how a thing happens, can tell nothing as to why it happens, nor has normal human consciousness any faculty for apprehending this region of causes. Had he, then, experienced that, dwelt in that, known reality face to face?

I remember withdrawing softly, as a giddy man withdraws cautiously from the edge of a precipice that makes him tremble. Quickly, I jotted down the brief exchange in a hand that shook a little. I sank back into my deep armchair with the strange assurance that it would be long before he really woke. I fell asleep. It was, this time, Vronski's sharp, practical voice that startled me.

"Humph! So you had to sleep, of course," he exclaimed in a whispered voice between a snap and a growl, yet somehow not unkindly. "It's six o'clock, you know. You've lost something, probably." He had already examined the sleeper, I knew, for he came to me out of the bedroom. His fearful eagerness was pathetic.

I shook my head, wide awake on the instant, all my faculties about me. I pushed my notes towards him.

"What?" he whispered. "He's waked then—and spoken? You heard it? You put questions—good ones? You understood—something?" He seized the notes as a famished man might snatch at food, his hand shaking, while he eyed my face and the paper alternately like a hungry wolf. I told him briefly what had occurred, as he read the sentences over and over again, first very rapidly to take in their general sense, then very slowly, reflectively, laboriously even. They were laconic enough, but I filled in the blanks in a whisper. His hunger, his envy, his greed to know, again touched my pity. I felt ashamed of being so unworthy a go-between.

"Yes, yes, of course," he was mumbling, as though speaking to himself rather than to me, "but we both knew that. We've been there before together already. The why of things, rather than the futile how that science gabbles. That's the first result of a changed, a different consciousness. But he's been beyond that—far, far beyond it. That's what I want to know—what the new faculties that come with a changed consciousness reveal—beyond the region of causes even. . . ."

His speech grew so rapid, so involved, I could not follow it. On his face the ravaged look intensified. He kept one eye, none the less, both ears as well, I knew, upon the inner room, and then suddenly glanced sharply back at me, as though my presence had just occurred to him. "There was more, much more, he wanted—tried—to say, wasn't there?" he shot at me. A quick smile of apology, of courtesy, accompanied it.

"That's the impression made upon me," I agreed. "He knew things impossible—utterly impossible—to communicate in ordinary words."

Vronski fell silent, thoughtful, for a moment, then went on again, as though talking to himself rather than to me:

"He was awake, of course, awake here in our sense," he muttered. "Just for those moments he was awake here—but to him that would be falling asleep again. He was talking in his sleep. He had already waked up out of all this long ago—waked up a second time. To come back to conditions here would be falling asleep again." His meaning was quite clear to me. Ordinary waking every morning is merely the gain of increased and clearer consciousness; to wake up then a second time involves a yet greater gain. "If he had talked nonsense, instead of sense," Vronski was whispering to himself, "he could have told more. Yes, yes, as you felt, he was just talking in his sleep," again picking an earlier thought out of my own mind. "A man in his own place," he repeated, "is ruler of his fate."

I stared stupidly, perhaps, yet not as stupidly as I doubtless looked. I realised, at least, that from the point of view of a different consciousness having new faculties, our own best scientific dicta must be childishly inadequate and false. But I found no useful word to say. Fatigue, too, began to stupefy me. "It was a good question all the same," he went on, "the one you put. Our three-dimensional consciousness has no faculty that can know anything of a universe that is certainly many-dimensional. Our best knowledge is a dream, bom of dream-minds in a dream-civilisation. To tell us how water runs downhill is to tell us nothing—why it runs downhill is god-like." He looked me over as man might regard a stupid employee who had done his best, and then suddenly something I found awful crept into the face.

"I doubt, I doubt now our getting anything," he whispered lower
than before, and the voice made me think of ice. "He'll wake of
course, right enough, but—but he'll leave us before he can—speak.
Leave finally I mean," his voice breaking queerly. "Just pay his debt
and go before we can get a word. The debt—twenty-five years—
twenty-five stolen years. Taken from here, they can only be repaid
here. In our time, I mean—for where he has been they are not even a
moment------ "

He stopped, he stood stock-still. He looked me over again, but with an intensity and thoroughness that made me avoid an inspection I found too much. I trembled a little in spite of myself.

"Something I could understand?" I stammered. "You mean—I should witness it?"

The expression that frightened me was gone: he was still grave,
extremely perplexed, but his look became human, sympathetic, gentle
towards me, as he nodded his head in answer. "Yes," he murmured,
"witness it, and with your own eyes." I left it there, asking no further
question because I dared not, and he went on quickly: "If he wakes,
have questions ready. Avoid his eyes, I advise. Hang on firmly, tightly,
to your own personality. Grip yourself like iron. Ask him"—he re-
flected a moment—"ask if he knows death—if he can speak of the
War—if love, Love, mind you—exists with value—if—if------------ "

He shrugged his great shoulders; the tired eyes that had not closed all night gave me a warmer look. "Oh, ask your own questions," he added almost hopelessly. "Just ask what occurs to you. And if anything—happens, call me up instantly. The telephone is at your hand. I shall be near—in this building." He read the shock in my face, of course. "Can you stand it?" he asked suddenly, moving away towards the door, my heart sinking as I noticed it.

I nodded stiffly. "Sudden, swift repayment, you mean?" I stammered. His head bowed as he turned the handle.

"Departure—final departure?" I heard my own horrified whisper.

"All those years—in just a moment?" For I caught his meaning, such was the intensity of his mind. With a shock I caught it. Decay and age involve considerable time, as I understood time, for normal life lays such process so gradually, slowly, softly on us all. Years compressed into a moment could only be appalling.

Vronski, now half out of the room, his face a mask of white, answered below his breath, a mere whisper that was dreadful with a kind of spiritual pain:

"If at all—it must be very rapid, may seem almost instantaneous," came the syllables across the quiet air. "Sweet, too, if terrible. The questions first, remember—if you can." And the door closed noiselessly behind him.

Alone again, after taking the coffee he had left me in a thermos, I tried to think out the questions I would ask. Something, perhaps subconscious guidance, assured me my cousin would not wake for hours. Were our deeper selves in telepathic communication possibly? I cannot say, I did not even try to think. At the time I was sure of nothing except that it was safe for me to take my rest and sleep, and this I therefore did, opening my eyes again after what must have been many hours, for it was well on into the short winter afternoon and dusk had come. My mind felt clear, it felt also calm, and this calmness I noticed with something of surprise. It has always seemed to me remarkable, indeed, that my nerves and faculties supported the entire experience as they did, and that I did not, almost literally, lose my senses. The riot of tearing emotions I certainly had known, bewilderment, excitement, a raging curiosity and fear beyond easy description, but deep within me all the time was some centre that held steady enough, some part of me that observed and judged, burned with a clear light, and even, for intolerable flashes, understood.

When I woke, at any rate, there was no violence of feeling in me, the tumult had died down, and only two words seemed to ring on hauntingly in my mind, with some touch of the turmoil that had first accompanied them. The combination, "sweet and terrible," was unusual still, but the horror with which I had first heard them did not now appear. And, after a cautious inspection of the sleeper and the bed in the next room to assure myself that there was no sign of change as yet, I bent my mind to the framing of the questions as best I might.

Yet behind each attempt, and despite my strongest effort to deny it, rose always the ghost of an expectant dread—the dread that before there was time to ask a single one, perhaps, something would happen to prevent, something to render replies impossible, something rapid, sweet and terrible. And this ghost of twenty-five years to be repaid I could not lay, it waved a shroud, as it were, above each word my pencil traced.

Within its limitations, none the less, my mind worked reasonably well, though the difficulty of choosing words and subject were too much for me. The subject was so vast, the field it might cover so inexhaustible. All the great adventuring Discoverers, from Buddha to Christ, I remembered, used childish local parables to convey something they themselves knew that yet lay beyond language, beyond any faculties their listeners possessed. How might I, thus, explain to a dog, watching me turn mere pages, that I am deeply immersed in the soul-fortunes of a dozen living characters? And how, similarly, could I, the dog this time, ask intelligently about a superhuman experience? I fell back, at last, upon questions of a very simple kind.

I would ask for information on what I called "man-in-the-street" matters, questions about what a commonplace mind like my own would like to know. If Mantravers had actually changed his type of consciousness so that his new faculties made him free of time in more than our one dimension, and in space of more than three, what could he report intelligibly about his experiences? Was he conscious, for instance, of being away from ordinary London life, or was he living both lives simultaneously, one life parallal to the other? Was there continuity of memory and personality, was the duration long or short and what did he do, feel, suffer and enjoy? I longed to know whether his experiences and reactions in this state of "elsewhere and otherwise" were commensurable with our three-dimensional existence, and while I knew it could not possibly be so, I had this burning curiosity to hear what he might say. Did he look forward into a future and back into a past, or were these both simultaneously accessible in the sense that a biography, from childhood to old age, lie between the covers of a book, for the reader to choose any period he will? If, too, the future was accessible to him now, as we say, could he thence influence, even alter, the past? Above all, I longed to know about what, on earth, is called happiness. Having risen above the world of effects which is human knowledge, into the world of causes, which is reality, did he gain satisfaction, rest for the spirit, peace?

I laid my pencil down, having covered sheet upon sheet with questions I knew to be futile—because I should never ask them. They were worthless, in any case, because unanswerable. I challenged myself, as I challenge anybody, to think of better ones. He had no terms, I had no terms, in which comprehensible answers could be given and understood. The Great War? Pain? Sleep? Love?—I drew my pencil through at least a hundred such, and leaned back in my chair to await events. . . .

Dusk was falling, the room darkening, shadows gathering, and my eyes, ever on the mysterious sleeper, saw details of wall and furniture less clearly now. Outlines of bed and chairs and windows faded, the silhouette of the sheets above the sleeper became filmed, there was a blur over the entire room, yet I had the queer feeling that this was less due to the waning light than to a lack of reality in the objects themselves. Each picture lost vividness because it was but a transient appearance of something more real that lay behind, something the senses never knew because no sense could apprehend directly. The idea came, then vanished again. At the same time I became aware of an invading stupor stealing over me, a stupor I fought against with all my power—not sleep or exhaustion of physical kind, but a dulling of my surface consciousness, as though some brighter faculty beyond it were trying to assert itself. That I resisted was, I came to believe long afterwards, a mistake; I here missed an opportunity, offered directly or indirectly by Mantravers. I can only guess at this. It was fear that prevented. Remembering Vronski's vehement warning, I held on to myself as tightly as I could, afraid of losing grip upon my personality. I was afraid, too, of being caught unawares, of being taken by surprise, suddenly horrified at the sight of the sleeper rising from his bed, coming across the room, standing beside me, looking down into my face. . . . And, it seemed, a long period passed, whose duration quite escaped my measurement, for though I can swear I did not sleep, I recall that my eyes now opened with a sudden start, and my ears similarly became sharply alert. Had twelve hours passed or twenty-four, or a few minutes only? It was the first definite thought that came to me—was it evening still, or early morning? The same thin layer as of dusk or twilight lay upon the room, but objects were more plainly visible than before. There was a light somewhere, it seemed.

The questions rose, but there was no time to satisfy them, for the nerves of sight and hearing were too insistent for me to think of anything else. There had, once again, been sound and movement. I looked, I listened, with all my power. The sleeping man was sitting up in his bed, that bell-like resonance vibrated in the air, the syllables of my name still echoed. I saw the figure, half upright, like some awful deity upon its throne, and the same second, the first instant of paralysis having passed, I had sprung to my feet. And it was at this moment, as I dashed across the carpet, that I heard a cock crow in the distance, and knew that it was early morning.

"Come to me, come quickly," rang the bell-like voice, "before I leave. Let the useless questions go. Just come to me."

I was already beside the bed. He was sitting up, leaning back upon his hands. I had the extraordinary impression he was going to rise and take the air. The radiance in his eyes and face and skin was marvellous. I saw a dark blue stain glow out upon his right temple, then fade away. It was like a bullet wound. All memory of my questions had wholly vanished. "Dying—you mean?" came automatically from my lips. "Is it—death?"

And then he laughed. His eyes ran over my face, the eyes I had been told to avoid.

"My second death. There are so many. This is the life I owed de
Frasne. All the lives are simultaneous--------- "

A flow of words that rushed on I cannot remember, even if I registered them. They held no meaning for me—in the instant of utterance, that is, they held a meaning I understood, as in a timeless flash, but meaning and understanding were gone again as soon as born. Only the shattering effect remained, as of something better left untold, unknown. The laughter, too, unnerved me, that sweet, careless, unearthly laughter that seemed to break up and destroy whatever was left of coherence in me.

"Tell us," I believe I cried, "tell me—before you go." I know that something of the sort burst from me. I can still hear my hoarse, breathless cry saying this. I was shaking with terror at the same time lest he touch me, for his hand came groping towards me where I stood against the bed. It seemed to me that if he touched me, my being somehow must dissolve. It seemed my very self was threatened, while yet that threatened self, trembling in the balance, understood why "life must be lost to find it," and that my courage failed. The awful yearning and the awful dread were there. It was the bell-like voice, with its sound of death or freedom, that caught me back into my pitiful restricted cage again, though not before I had realised something of the loneliness, the deific beauty and glory in that loss of self without which no heaven is attainable.

"Stop thinking," was what I caught of his answer. "Behind thought lies the entrance. Reason and thinking hold us in the life of least importance. Go behind both to find the beginning—behind the mind —into a different way. You will find several lives together and at once—and more than one kind of death. . . ."

His meaning, at the moment, flashed like lightning across my understanding, but his eyes were now holding mine, and I could not speak. Did his conditions flow over into me? Did I borrow some faint reflection of what he knew, of where he was, of a difference he tried to convey? I cannot say. Words left my mind, for they were useless, vain, meaningless. No words existed anywhere—the few he used are reported as feebly, inaccurately, as those I fought to choose for myself. The mind, as an instrument, lay helpless, withered. His eyes held mine. I looked, that is, straight into his own. And I understood—oh, so easily and clearly and simply then—that my full earth-life was but a fraction, a trivial rivulet, that ran parallel with numerous other streams that were deeper, mightier, more important. It was a question of focusing upon this little rivulet, or spreading attention and consciousness over them all, yet simultaneously. In his eyes I read this fantastic but literal certainty. I became aware of stresses of a kind never before experienced. No mental or emotional tension life had brought me hitherto, either by way of love, hate, passion, yearning, fear, was akin to it. I was stretched and altered, altered above all, in my deepest essential being, and yet such alteration was easy, natural, right, while entirely new, and different to anything I could, imaginatively or intellectually, have even supposed possible. For above all I noticed this—that it was unlike anything my mind could have even imagined. .

I watched him, and as I watched the light I had already noticed in the room increased a little, as though it came closer. Its origin I had not guessed, though I certainly had not fancied it, and it was, I knew, external to himself. Both bed and occupant became a shade clearer. I stared with intense and feverish attention. I could have sworn there was a change, the flutter of a change. That was the word—it fluttered, then was gone. But it returned, this faint, fluttering difference. I noticed it a second time. It was lost again. Something touched the face, there was a change upon the features. It vanished. With it came over me a rushing instinct that I must be quick, I must act instantly, or the opportunity would be lost for ever. This certainty swept me like an icy wind, and the ghostly dread I could not lay moved down the air. What Vronski feared might happen was on the way, closer, nearer, even imminent. I must plunge in as best I could, and I made the effort, as the hundred questions flew past me in their glittering series. I picked one out, then another, and another, but could not speak them, could not utter even a sound, for all were useless, meaningless, and the awful flutter, meanwhile, had re-appeared, this time lingering. Thought froze in me. I closed my eyes a second. It was his quiet laughter that made me open them again the next moment. The light had come closer than before, and the ghastly signature upon his face, I saw, had deepened. I actually saw it spring back, this fluttering alteration, to settle like a great bright insect on the face. He was speaking, but the bell-like note had left the voice, and then the lips stopped moving, the eyes lost their terrible radiance, the whole skin paled, the arms supporting the body sagged.

"Christ!" I heard my voice with a stifled shriek, his curious light laughter still audible across it. It was that same happy, careless laughter, no pain, not even anxiety, possible with such a sound, a laughter of relief rather. And the voice came with it as a bell ringing across great distances: "Ah, that above all else, the way of light," reached my ears faintly, brokenly, a profound wavering sigh accompanying it. "I will tell you, tell all I can—show you the escaping

way—the why---- " the syllables dying into incoherence then, so

that I bent over to catch the scarcely audible whisper that almost
stopped my heart. Though confused, words running into each other,
their meaning penetrated: "a moment—a moment only—I must first
pay back the stolen years—now and here. After that I will tell---- "

The whisper died out because the lips through which it came were gone already. I remember an odd sound behind me, an increase of light as well, but it was impossible to turn my head. The horror of what Vronski's cryptic words had suggested was nothing to the horror of what I saw. I stared. The whole dreadful sight came, it seemed, in a single second. Twenty-five years rushed on him in a single moment. He did not stare back because the eyes, following the lips, were no longer there to stare with. The features all ran away together. In the space of a few seconds, fifteen perhaps at most, Sydney Mantravers aged twenty-five years, became a quarter of a century older. The accumulation of this period's decay was upon him, all over him, with an abrupt, appalling rush. The skin grew loose and wrinkled, changing, even hiding the eyes so that it seemed they disappeared; the muscles slackened, sprayed, sagged away, chin and neck showing it most clearly. There was a ghastly crumpling together of the entire physical frame. The shrivelling seemed intensified by its swiftness. I remember that no comprehensible feeling was in me, horror having passed into something else, and similarly, no thought took the brain. Tire "bends" rose as a picture, because probably my mind contained it as the only comparable human experience, the hideous "bends" that divers know on rising too rapidly from deep waters before the decompression can be applied, or, when caught unawares in too great depths, the frame is jellied, the entire body crammed up into the helmet. There rose another picture too—of a mummy exposed suddenly to air and damp becoming a little heap of dust soon after. These awful pictures rose, then vanished, as though the mind automatically searched for a parallel.

Though it was not quite so, the body none the less collapsed in a dreadful, stupid heap before my eyes, the last detail to suffer change being the small red bruise that glowed in the right temple before it too was gone. One feeble breath rose from the huddled shape upon the sheets, one last fluttering breath escaped the dried and shrunken flesh that had been lips, bearing with extreme faintness a ghost of happy laughter, and just reaching my ears as I bent closer above the dissolving face: "a moment . . . only a moment . . . and I will tell you . . . escaping way . . . elsewhere and otherwise . . ."

Loud and quite clear behind my back, as the light came closer suddenly, was the piteous, convulsive sound of Vronski's sobbing, beyond which again, the faint clear note as of a ringing bell that died away into the silence.

Enoch. Soames

By MAX BEERBOHM

When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for Soames, Enoch. I had feared he would not be there. He was not there. But everybody else was. Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in Mr. Holbrook Jackson's pages. The book was as thorough as it was brilliantly written. And thus the omission found by me was an all the deadlier, record of poor Soames' failure to impress himself on his decade.

I daresay I am the only person who noticed the omission. Soames had failed so piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in the thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed, like those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian's beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they were, been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made the bargain _mI saw him make—that strange bargain whose results have kept him*' always in the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very results that the full piteousness of him glares out.

Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his sake, poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It is ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames without making him ridiculous? Or rather, how am I to hush up the horrid fact that he was ridiculous? I shall not be able to do that. Yet, sooner or later, write about him I must. You will see, in due course, that I have no option. And I may as well get the thing done now.

• In the Summer Term of '93 a bolt from the blue flashed down on Oxford. It drove deep, it hurtlingly embedded itself in the soil. Dons and undergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it. Whence came it, this meteorite? From Paris. Its name? Will Rothenstein. Its aim? To do a series of twenty-four portraits in lithograph. These were to be published from the Bodley Head, London. The matter was urgent. Already the Warden of A, and the Master of B, and the Regius Professor of C, had meekly "sat." Dignified and doddering old men, who had never consented to sit to any one, could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue: he invited; he did not invite: he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Edmond de Goncourt. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons, he was going to include a few undergraduates. It was a proud day for me when I—I was included. I liked Rothenstein not less than I feared him; and there arose between us a friendship that has grown ever warmer, and been more and more valued by me, with every passing year.

At the end of Term he settled in—or rather, meteoritically into— London. It was to him I owed my first knowledge of that forever enchanting little world-in-itself, Chelsea, and my first acquaintance with Walter Sickert and other august elders who dwelt there. It was Rothenstein that took me to see, in Cambridge Street, Pimlico, a 'young man whose drawings were already famous among the few— Aubrey Beardsley, by name. With Rothenstein I paid my first visit to the Bodley Head. By him I was inducted into another haunt of intellect and daring, the domino room of the Cafe Royal.

There, on that October evening—there, in that exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors and upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the

painted and pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes shuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath, and "This indeed," said I to myself, "is life."

It was the hour before dinner. We drank vermouth. Those who knew Rothenstein were pointing him out to those who knew him only by name. Men were constantly coming in through the swing-doors and wandering slowly up and down in search of vacant tables, or of tables occupied by friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin vague beard—or rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He was an odd-looking person; but in the 'nineties odd apparitions were more frequent, I think, than they are now. The young writers of that era—and I was sure this man was a writer—strove earnestly to be distinct in aspect. This man had striven unsuccessfully. He wore a soft black hat of clerical kind but of Bohemian intention, and a grey waterproof cape which, perhaps because it was waterproof, failed to be romantic. I decided that "dim" was the mot juste for him. I had already essayed to write, and was immensely keen on the mot juste, that Holy Grail of the period.

The dim man was now again approaching our table, and this time he made up his mind to pause in front of it. "You don't remember me," he said in a toneless voice.

Rothenstein brightly focussed him. "Yes, I do," he replied after a moment, with pride rather than effusion—pride in a retentive memory. "Edwin Soames."

"Enoch Soames," said Enoch.

"Enoch Soames," repeated Rothenstein in a tone implying that it was enough to have hit on the surname. "We met in Paris two or three times when you were living there. We met at the Café Groche."

"And I came to your studio once."

"Oh yes; I was sorry I was out."

"But you were in. You showed me some of your paintings, you know. ... I hear you're in Chelsea now." "Yes."

I almost wondered that Mr. Soames did not, after this monosyllable, pass along. He stood patiently there, rather like a dumb animal, rather like a donkey looking over a gate. A sad figure, his. It occurred to me that "hungry" was perhaps the mot juste for him; but—hungry for what? He looked as if he had little appetite for anything. I was sorry for him; and Rothenstein, though he had not invited him to Chelsea, did ask him to sit down and have something to drink.

Seated, he was more self-assertive. He flung back the wings of his cape with a gesture which—had not those wings been waterproof —might have seemed to hurl defiance at things in general. And he ordered an absinthe. "Je me tiens toujours fidèle," he told Rothenstein, "à Ja sorcière glauque."

"It is bad for you," said Rothenstein dryly.

"Nothing is bad for one," answered Soames. "Dans ce monde il n'y a ni de bien ni de mal."

"Nothing good and nothing bad? How do you mean?" "I explained it all in the preface to 'Negations.' " " 'Negations'?"

"Yes; I gave you a copy of it."

"Oh, yes, of course. But did you explain—for instance—that there was no such thing as bad or good grammar?"

"N-no," said Soames. "Of course in Art there is the good and the evil. But in Life—no." lie was rolling a cigarette. He had weak white hands, not well washed, and with finger-tips much stained by nicotine. "In Life there are illusions of good and evil, but"—his voice trailed away to a murmur in which the words "vieux jeu" and "rococo" were faintly audible. I think he felt he was not doing himself justice, and feared that Rothenstein was going to point out fallacies. Anyhow, he cleared his throat and said "Parlons d'autre chose."

It occurs to you that he was a fool? It didn't to me. I was young, and had not the clarity of judgment that Rothenstein already had. Soames was quite five or six years older than either of us. Also, he had written a book.

It was wonderful to have written a book.

If Rothenstein had not been there, I should have revered Soames. Even as it was, I respected him. And I was very near indeed to reverence when he said he had another book coming out soon. I asked if I might ask what kind of book it was to be.

"My poems," he answered. Rothenstein asked if this was to be the
title of the book. The poet meditated on this suggestion, but said he
rather thought of giving the book no title at all. "If a book is good
in itself------ " he murmured, waving his cigarette.

Rothenstein objected that absence of title might be bad for the sale of a book. "If," he urged, "I went into a bookseller's and said simply 'Have you got?' or 'Have you a copy of?' how would they know what I wanted?"

"Oh, of course I should have my name on the cover," Soames answered earnestly. "And I rather want," he added, looking hard at Rothenstein, "to have a drawing of myself as frontispiece." Rothenstein admitted that this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into the country and would be there for some time. He then looked at his watch, exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me to dinner. Soames remained at his post of fidelity to the glaucous witch.

"Why were you so determined not to draw him?" I asked.

"Draw him? Him? How can one draw a man who doesn't exist?"

"He is dim," I admitted. But my mot juste fell flat. Rothenstein repeated that Soames was non-existent.

Still, Soames had written a book. I asked if Rothenstein had read "Negations." He said he had looked into it, "but," he added crisply, "I don't profess to know anything about writing." A reservation very characteristic of the period! Painters would not then allow that any one outside their own order had a right to any opinion about painting. This law (graven on the tablets brought down by Whistler from the summit of Fujiyama) imposed certain limitations. If other arts than painting were not utterly unintelligible to all but the men who practised them, the law tottered—the Monroe Doctrine, as it were, did not hold good. Therefore no painter would offer an opinion of a book without warning you at any rate that his opinion was worthless. No one is a better judge of literature than Rothenstein; but it wouldn't have done to tell him so in those days; and I knew that I must form an unaided judgment on "Negations."

Not to buy a book of which I had met the author face to face would have been for me in those days an impossible act of self-denial. When I returned to Oxford for the Christmas Term I had duly secured "Negations." I used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in my room, and whenever a friend took it up and asked what it was about I would say "Oh, it's rather a remarkable book. It's by a man whom I know." Just "what it was about" I never was able to say. Head or tail was just what I hadn't made of that slim green volume. I found in the preface no clue to the exiguous labyrinth of contents, and in that labyrinth nothing to explain the preface.

"Lean near to life. Lean very near—nearer.

"Life is web, and therein nor warp nor woof is, but web only.

"It is for this I am CathoJick in church and in thought, yet do let switt Mood weave there what the shuttle of Mood wills."

These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. Then came "Stark: A Conte," about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendès in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula— lacking, I felt, in "snap." Next, some aphorisms (entitled à<t>opicriJuiTa). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form; and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It was rather the substance that eluded me. Was there, I wondered, any substance at all? It did now occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a fool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose J was! I inclined to give Soames the benefit of the doubt. I had read "L'Après-midi d'un Faune" without extracting a glimmer of meaning. Yet Mallarmé—of course— was a Master. How was I to know that Soames wasn't another? There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden perhaps with meanings as deep as Mallarmé's own. I awaited his poems with an open mind.

And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had a second meeting with him. This was on an evening in January. Going into the aforesaid domino room, I passed a table at which sat a pale man with an open book before him. He looked from his book to me, and I looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I ought to have recognised him. I returned to pay my respects. After exchanging a few words, I said with a glance to the open book, "I see I am interrupting you," and was about to pass on, but "I prefer," Soames replied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and I obeyed his gesture that I should sit down.

I asked him if he often read here. "Yes; things of this kind I read here," he answered, indicating the title of his book—"The Poems of Shelley."

"Anything that you really"—and I was going to say "admire?" But I cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done so, for he said, with unwonted emphasis, "Anything second-rate."

I had read little of Shelley, but "Of course," I murmured, "he's very uneven."

"I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames' laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What a period!" he uttered, laying the book down. And "What a country!" he added.

I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or less held his own against the drawbacks of time and place. He admitted that there were "passages in Keats," but did not specify them. Of "the older men," as he called them, he seemed to like only Milton. "Milton," he said, "wasn't sentimental." Also, "Milton had a dark insight." And again, "I can always read Milton in the reading-room."

"The reading-room?"

"Of the British Museum. I go there every day."

"You do? I've only been there once. I'm afraid I found it rather a depressing place. It—it seemed to sap one's vitality."

"It does. That's why I go there. The lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art. I live near the Museum. I have rooms in Dyott Street."

"And you go round to the reading-room to read Milton?"

"Usually Milton." He looked at me. "It was Milton," he certifica-tively added, "who converted me to Diabolism."

"Diabolism? Oh yes? Really?" said I, with that vague discomfort and that intense desire to be polite which one feels when a man speaks of his own religion. "You—worship the Devil?"

Soames shook his head. "It's not exactly worship," he qualified, sipping his absinthe. "It's more a matter of trusting and encourag-ing."

"Ah, yes . . . But I had rather gathered from the preface to 'Negations' that you were a—a Catholic."

"Je Tétais à cette époque. Perhaps I still am. Yes, I'm a Catholic diabolist."

This profession he made in an almost cursory tone. I could see that what was upmost in his mind was the fact that I had read "Negations." His pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. I felt as one who is about to be examined, viva voce, on the very subject in which he is shakiest. I hastily asked him how soon his poems were to be published. "Next week," he told me.

"And are they to be published without a title?"

"No. I found a title, at last. But I shan't tell you what it is," as though I had been so impertinent as to inquire. "I am not sure that it wholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggests something of the quality of the poems . . . Strange growths, natural and wild, yet exquisite," he added, "and many-hued, and full of poisons."

I asked him what he thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort that was his laugh, and "Baudelaire," he said, "was a bourgeois malgré lui." France had only one poet: Villon; "and two-thirds, of Villon were sheer journalism." Verlaine was "an épicier malgré lui." Altogether, rather to my surprise, he rated French literature lower than English. There were "passages" in Villiers de l'lsle-Adam. But "I," he summed up, "owe nothing to France." He nodded at me. "You'll see," he predicted.

I did not, when the time came, quite see that. I thought the author of "Fungoids" did—unconsciously, of course—owe something to the young Parisian décadents, or to the young English ones who owed something to them. I still think so. The little book—bought by me in Oxford—lies before me as I write. Its pale grey buckram cover and silver lettering have not worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with a melancholy interest, I have again been looking. They are not much. But at the time of their publication I had a vague suspicion that they might be. I suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor Soames' work, that is weaker than it once was. . . .

to a young woman

Thou art, who hast not been.'

Pale tunes irresolute

And traceries of old sounds

Blown from a rotted flute Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust, Nor not strange forms and epicene

Lie bleeding in the dust,

Being wounded with wounds.

For this it is That in thy counterpart

Of age-long mockeries Thou hast not been nor art/

There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first and last lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. But I did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in Soames' mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the craftsmanship, "rouged with rust" seemed to me a fine stroke, and "nor not" instead of "and" had a curious felicity. I wondered who the Young Woman was, and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect that Soames could not have made more of it than she. Yet, even now, if one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for the sound, there is a certain grace of cadence. Soames was an artist—in so far as he was anything, poor fellow!

It seemed to me, when first I read "Fungoids," that, oddly enough, the Diabolistic side of him was the best. Diabolism seemed to be a cheerful, even a wholesome, influence in his life.

nocturne

Round and round the shuttcr'd Square I stroll'd with the Devil's arm in mine. No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there And the ring of his laughter and mine. We had drunk black wine.

I scream'd, "I will race you, Master/" "What matter," he shriek'd, "to-night Which of us runs the taster? There is nothing to fear to-night In the foul moon's light.'"

Then I look'd him in the eyes, And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise. It was true, what I'd time and again been told: He was old—old.

There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanza—a joyous and rollicking note of comradeship. The second was slightly hysterical perhaps. But I liked the third: it was so bracingly unorthodox, even according to the tenets of Soames' peculiar sect in the faith. Not much "trusting and encouraging" here! Soames triumphantly exposing the Devil as a liar, and laughing "full shrill," cut a quite heartening figure, I thought—then! Now, in the light of what befell, none of his poems depresses me so much as "Nocturne."

I looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to say. They seemed to fall into two classes: those who had little to say and those who had nothing. The second class was the larger, and the words of the first were cold; insomuch that

Strikes a note of modernity throughout. . . .These tripping numbers.—Preston Telegraph.

was the only lure offered in advertisements by Soames' publisher. I had hopes that when next I met the poet I could congratulate him on having made a stir; for I fancied he was not so sure of his intrinsic greatness as he seemed. I was but able to say, rather coarsely, when next I did see him, that I hoped "Fungoids" was "selling splendidly." He looked at me across his glass of absinthe and asked if I had bought a copy. His publisher had told him that three had been sold. I laughed, as at a jest.

"You don't suppose I care, do you?" he said, with something like a snarl. I disclaimed the notion. He added that he was not a tradesman. I said mildly that I wasn't, either, and murmured that an artist who gave truly new and great things to the world had always to wait long for recognition. He said he cared not a sou for recognition. I agreed that the act of creation was its own reward.

His moroseness might have alienated me if I had regarded myself as a nobody. But ah! hadn't both John Lane and Aubrey Beardsley suggested that I should write an essay for the great new venture that was afoot—"The Yellow Book"? And hadn't Henry Harland, as editor, accepted my essay? And wasn't it to be in the very first number? At Oxford I was still in statu pupillari. In London I regarded myself as very much indeed a graduate now—one whom no Soames could ruffle. Partly to show off, partly in sheer good-will, I told Soames he ought to contribute to "The Yellow Book." He uttered from the throat a sound of scom for that publication.

Nevertheless, I did, a day or two later, tentatively ask Harland if he knew anything of the work of a man called Enoch Soames. Harland paused in the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up his hands towards the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met "that absurd creature" in Paris, and this very morning had received some poems in manuscript from him.

"Has he no talent?" I asked.

"He has an income. He's all right." Harland was the most joyous of men and most generous of critics, and he hated to talk of anything about which he couldn't be enthusiastic. So I dropped the subject of Soames. The news that Soames had an income did take the edge off solicitude. I learned afterwards that he was the son of an unsuccessful and deceased bookseller in Preston, but had inherited an annuity of ¿300 from a married aunt, and had no surviving relatives of any kind. Materially, then, he was "all right." But there was still a spiritual pathos about him, sharpened for me now by the possibility that even the praises of The Pieston Telegraph might not have been forthcoming had he not been the son of a Preston man. He had a sort of weak doggedness which I could not but admire. Neither he nor his work received the slightest encouragement; but he persisted in behaving as a personage: always he kept his dingy little flag flying. Wherever congregated the /eunes feroces of the arts, in whatever Soho restaurant they had just discovered, in whatever music-hall they were most frequenting, there was Soames in the midst of them, or rather on the fringe of them, a dim but inevitable figure. He never sought to propitiate his fellow-writers, never báted a jot of his arrogance about his own work or of his contempt for theirs. To the painters he was respectful, even humble; but for the poets and prosaists of "The Yellow Book," and later of "The Savoy," he had never a word but of scorn. He wasn't resented. It didn't occur to anybody that he or his Catholic Diabolism mattered. When, in the autumn of '96, he brought out (at his own expense, this time) a third book, his last book, nobody said a word for or against it. I meant, but forgot, to buy it. I never saw it, and am ashamed to say I don't even remember what it was called. But I did, at the time of its publication, say to Rothenstein that I thought poor old Soames was really a rather tragic figure, and that I believed he would literally die for want of recognition. Rothenstein scoffed. He said I was trying to get credit for a kind heart which I didn't possess; and perhaps this was so. But at the private view of the New English Art Club, a few weeks later, I beheld a pastel portrait of "Enoch Soames, Esq." It was very like him, and very like Rothenstein to have done it. Soames was standing near it, in his soft hat and his waterproof cape, all through the afternoon. Anybody who knew him would have recognised the portrait at a glance, but nobody who didn't know him would have recognised the portrait from its bystander: it "existed" so much more than he; it was bound to. Also, it had not that expression of faint happiness which on this day was discernible, yes, in Soames' countenance. Fame had breathed on him. Twice again in the course of the month I went to the New English, and on both occasions Soames himself was on view there. Looking back, I regard the close of that exhibition as having been virtually the close of his career. He had felt the breath of Fame against his cheek—so late, for such a little while; and at its withdrawal he gave in, gave up, gave out. He, who had never looked strong or well, looked ghastly now—a shadow of the shade he had once been. He still frequented the domino room, but, having lost all wish to excite curiosity, he no longer read books there. "You read only at the Museum now?" asked I, with attempted cheerfulness. He said he never went there now. "No absinthe there," he muttered. It was the sort of thing that in the old days he would have said for effect; but it carried conviction now. Absinthe, erst but a point in the "personality" he had striven so hard to build up, was solace and necessity now. He no longer called it "la sorcière glauque." He had shed away all his French phrases. He had become a plain, unvarnished, Preston man.

Failure, if it be a plain, unvarnished, complete failure, and even though it be a squalid failure, has always a certain dignity. I avoided Soames because he made me feel rather vulgar. John Lane had published, by this time, two little books of mine, and they had had a pleasant little success of esteem. I was a—slight but definite—"personality." Frank Harris had engaged me to kick up my heels in The Saturday Review, Alfred Harmsworth was letting me do likewise in The Daily Mail. I was just what Soames wasn't. And he shamed my gloss. Had I known that he really and firmly believed in the greatness of what he as an artist had achieved, I might not have shunned him. No man who hasn't lost his vanity can be held to have altogether failed. Soames' dignity was an illusion of mine. One day in the first week of June, 1897, that illusion went. But on the evening of that day Soames went too.

I had been out most of the morning, and, as it was too late to reach home in time for luncheon, I sought "the Vingtième." This little place—Restaurant du Vingtième Siècle, to give it its full title —had been discovered in '96 by the poets and prosaists, but had now been more or less abandoned in favour of some later find. I don't think it lived long enough to justify its name; but at that time there it still was, in Greek Street, a few doors from Soho Square, and almost opposite to that house where, in the first years of the century, a little girl, and with her a boy named De Quincey, made nightly encampment in darkness and hunger among dust and rats and old legal parchments. The Vingtième was but a small whitewashed room, leading out into the street at one end and into a kitchen at the other. The proprietor and cook was a Frenchman, known to us as Monsieur Vingtième; the waiters were his two daughters, Rose and Berthe; and the food, according to faith, was good. The tables were so narrow, and were set so close together, that there was space for twelve of them, six jutting from either wall.

Only the two nearest to the door, as I went in, were occupied. On one side sat a tall, flashy, rather Mephistophelian man whom I had seen from time to time in the domino room and elsewhere. On the other side sat Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room —Soames sitting haggard in that hat and cape which nowhere at any season had I seen him doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom I more than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, or the head of a private detective agency. I was sure Soames didn't want my company; but I asked, as it would have seemed brutal not to, whether I might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. He was smoking a cigarette, with an untasted salmi of something on his plate and a half-empty bottle of Sauteme before him; and he was quite silent. I said that the preparations for the Jubilee made London impossible. (I rather liked them, really.) I professed a wish to go right away till the whole thing was over. In vain did I attune myself to his gloom. He seemed not to hear me nor even to see me. I felt that his behaviour made me ridiculous in the eyes of the other man. The gangway between the two rows of tables at the Vingtième was hardly more than two feet wide (Rose and Bertlie, in their ministrations, had always to edge past each other, quarrelling in whispers as they did so), and any one at the table abreast of yours was practically at yours. I thought our neighbour was amused at my failure to interest Soames, and so, as I could not explain to him that my insistence was merely charitable, I became silent. Without turning my head, I had him well within my range of vision. I hoped I looked less vulgar than he in contrast with Soames. I was sure he was not an Englishman, but what was his nationality? Though his jet-black hair was enbrosse, I did not think he was French. To Berthe, who waited on him, he spoke French fluently, but with a hardly native idiom and accent. I gathered that this was his first visit to the Vingtième; but Berthe was offhand in her manner to him: he had not made a good impression. His eyes were handsome, but—like the Vingtième's tables—too narrow and set too close together. His nose was predatory, and the points of his moustache, waxed up beyond his nostrils, gave a fixity to his smile. Decidedly, he was sinister. And my sense of discomfort in his presence was intensified by the scarlet waistcoat which tightly, and so unseasonably in June, sheathed his ample chest. This waistcoat wasn't wrong merely because of the heat, cither. It was somehow all wrong in itself. It wouldn't have done on Christmas morning. It would have struck a jarring note at the first night of "Hernani." I was trying to account for its wrongness when Soames suddenly and strangely broke silence. "A hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance.

"We shall not be here!" I briskly but fatuously added.

"We shall not be here. No," he droned, "but the Museum will still be just where it is. And the reading-room, just where it is. And people will be able to go and read there." He inhaled sharply, and a spasm as of actual pain contorted his features.

I wondered what train of thought poor Soames had been following. He did not enlighten me when he said, after a long pause, "You think I haven't minded."

"Minded what, Soames?"

"Neglect. Failure."

"Failure?" I said heartily. "Failure?" I repeated vaguely. "Neglect-yes, perhaps; but that's quite another matter. Of course you haven't

been—appreciated. But what then? Any artist who—who gives--- "

What I wanted to say was, "Any artist who gives truly new and great things to the world has always to wait long for recognition"; but the flattery would not out: in the face of his misery, a misery so genuine and so unmasked, my lips would not say the words.

And then—he said them for me. I flushed. "That's what you were going to say, isn't it?" he asked.

"How did you know?"

"It's what you said to me three years ago, when 'Fungoids' was published." I flushed the more. I need not have done so at all, for "It's the only important thing I ever heard you say," he continued. "And I've never forgotten it. It's a true thing. It's a horrible truth. But—d'you remember what I answered? I said 'I don't care a sou for recognition.' And you believed me. You've gone on believing I'm above that sort of thing. You're shallow. What should you know of the feelings of a man like me? You imagine that a great artist's faith in himself and in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy . . . You've never guessed at the bitterness and loneliness, the"—his voice broke; but presently he resumed, speaking with a force that I had never known in him. "Posterity! What use is it to me? A dead man doesn't know that people are visiting his grave—visiting his birthplace—putting up tablets to him—unveiling statues of him. A dead man can't read the books that are written about him. A hundred years hence! Think of it! If I could come back to life then—just for a few hours—and go to the reading-room, and read.' Or better still: if I could be projected, now, at this moment, into that future, into that reading-room, just for this one afternoon! I'd sell myself body and soul to the devil, for that! Think of the pages and pages in the catalogue: 'Soames, Enoch' endlessly—endless editions, commentaries, prolegomena, biographies" —but here he was interrupted by a sudden loud creak of the chair at the next table. Our neighbour had half risen from his place. He was leaning towards us, apologetically intrusive.

"Excuse—permit me," he said softly. "I have been unable not to hear. Might I take a liberty? In this little restaurant-sans-facon"—he spread wide his hands—"might I, as the phrase is, 'cut in'?"

I could but signify our acquiescence. Berthe had appeared at the kitchen door, thinking the stranger wanted his bill. He waved her away with his cigar, and in another moment had seated himself beside me, commanding a full view of Soames.

"Though not an Englishman," he explained, "I know my London well, Mr. Soames. Your name and fame—Mr. Beerbohm's too—very known to me. Your point is: who am I?" He glanced quickly over his shoulder, and in a lowered voice said, "I am the Devil."

I couldn't help it: I laughed. I tried not to, I knew there was nothing to laugh at, my rudeness shamed me, but—I laughed with increasing volume. The Devil's quiet dignity, the surprise and disgust of his raised eyebrows, did but the more dissolve me. I rocked to and fro, I lay back aching. I behaved deplorably.

"I am a gentleman, and," he said with intense emphasis, "I thought I was in the company of gentlemen."

"Don't!" I gasped faintly. "Oh, don't!"

"Curious, nicht wahi?" I heard him say to Soames. "There is a type of person to whom the very mention of my name is—oh-so-awfully-funny! In your theatres the dullest comedien needs only to say 'The Devil!' and right away they give him 'the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.' Is it not so?"

I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted them, but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.

"I am a man of business," he said, "and always I would put things through 'right now,' as they say in the States. You are a poet. Les affaires—you detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh? What you have said just now gives me furiously to hope."

Soames had not moved, except to light a fresh cigarette. He sat crouched forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his head just above the level of his hands, staring up at the Devil. "Go on," he nodded. I had no remnant of laughter in me now.

"It will be the more pleasant, our little deal," the Devil went on, "because you are—I mistake not?—a Diabolist."

"A Catholic Diabolist," said Soames.

The Devil accepted the reservation genially. "You wish," he resumed, "to visit now—this afternoon as-ever-is—the reading-room of the British Museum, yes? but of a hundred years hence, yes? Parfaite-ment. Time—an illusion. Past and future—they are as ever-present as the present, or at any rate only what you call 'just-round-the-corner.' I switch you on to any date. I project you—pouf! You wish to be in the reading-room just as it will be on the afternoon of June 3, 1997? You wish to find yourself standing in that room, just past the swing-doors, this very minute, yes? and to stay there till closing time? Am I right?"

Soames nodded.

The Devil looked at his watch. "Ten past two," he said. "Closing time in summer same then as now: seven o'clock. That will give you almost five hours. At seven o'clock—pouf!—you find yourself again here, sitting at this table. I am dining tonight dans le monde—dans Je higlit. That concludes my present visit to your great city. I come and fetch you here, Mr. Soames, on my way home."

"Home?" I echoed.

"Be it never so humble!" said the Devil lightly. "All right," said Soames.

"Soames!" I entreated. But my friend moved not a muscle.

The Devil had made as though to stretch forth his hand across the table and touch Soames' forearm; but he paused in his gesture.

"A hundred years hence, as now," he smiled, "no smoking allowed
in the reading-room. You would better therefore-------------- "

Soames removed the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into his glass of Sauteme.

"Soames!" again I cried. "Can't you"—but the Devil had now stretched forth his hand across the table. He brought it slowly down on—the table-cloth. Soames' chair was empty. His cigarette floated sodden in his wine-glass. There was no other trace of him.

For a few moments the Devil let his hand rest where it lay, gazing at me out of the corners of his eyes, vulgarly triumphant.

A shudder shook me. With an effort I controlled myself and rose from my chair. "Very clever," I said condescendingly. "But—"The Time Machine' is a delightful book, don't you think? So entirely original!"

"You are pleased to sneer," said the Devil, who had also risen, "but it is one thing to write about an impossible machine; it is a quite other thing to be a Supernatural Power." All the same, I had scored.

Berthe had come forth at the sound of our rising. I explained to her that Mr. Soames had been called away, and that both he and I would be dining here. It was not until I was out in the open air that I began to feel giddy. I have but the haziest recollection of what I did, where I wandered, in the glaring sunshine of that endless afternoon. I remember the sound of carpenters' hammers all along Piccadilly, and the bare chaotic look of the half-erected "stands." Was it in the Green Park, or in Kensington Gardens, or where was it that I sat on a chair beneath a tree, trying to read an evening paper? There was a phrase in the leading article that went on repeating itself in my fagged mind—"Little is hidden from this august Lady full of the garnered wisdom of sixty years of Sovereignty." I remember wildly conceiving a letter (to reach Windsor by express messenger told to await answer):

Madam,—Well knowing that your Majesty is full of the garnered wisdom of sixty years of Sovereignty, I venture to ask your advice in the following delicate matter. Mr. Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may not know . . .

Was there no way of helping him—saving him? A bargain was a bargain, and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a reasonable obligation. I wouldn't have lifted a little finger to save Faust. But poor Soames!—doomed to pay without respite an eternal price for nothing but a fruitless search and a bitter disillusioning. . . .

Odd and uncanny it seemed to me that he, Soames, in the flesh, in the waterproof cape, was at this moment living in the last decade of the next century, poring over books not yet written, and seeing and seen by men not yet born. Uncannier and odder still that to-night and evermore he would be in Hell. Assuredly, truth was stranger than fiction.

Endless that afternoon was. Almost I wished I had gone with Soames—not indeed to stay in the reading-room, but to sally forth for a brisk sight-seeing walk around a new London. I wandered restlessly out of the Park i had sat in. Vainly I tried to imagine myself an ardent tourist from the eighteenth century. Intolerable was the strain of the slow-passing and empty minutes. Long before seven o'clock I was back at the Vingtième.

I sat there just where I had sat for luncheon. Air came in listlessly through the open door behind me. Now and again Rose or Berthe appeared for a moment. I had told them I would not order any dinner till Mr. Soames came. A hurdy-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise of a quarrel between some Frenchmen further up the street. Whenever the tune was changed I heard the quarrel still raging. I had bought another evening paper on my way. I unfolded it. My eyes gazed ever away from it to the clock over the kitchen door. . . .

Five minutes, now, to the hour! I remembered that clocks in restaurants are kept five minutes fast. I concentrated my eyes on the paper. I vowed I would not look away from it again. I held it upright, at its full width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it. . . . Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of the draught, I told myself.

My arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but I could not drop them—now. I had a suspicion, I had a certainty. Well, what then? . . . What else had I come for? Yet I held tight that barrier of newspaper. Only the sound of Berthe's brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me, forced me, to drop it, and to utter:

"What shall we have to eat, Soames?"

"11 est souffrant, ce pauvre Monsieur Soames?" asked Berthe.

"He's only—tired." I asked her to get some wine—Burgundy—and
whatever food might be ready. Soames sat crouched forward against
the table, exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he had
never moved—he who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice
in the afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps his
journey was not to be fruitless—that perhaps we had all been wrong
in our estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been
horribly right was horribly clear from the look of him. But "Don't be
discouraged," I falteringly said. "Perhaps it's only that you—didn't
leave enough time. Two, three centuries hence, perhaps "

"Yes," his voice came. "I've thought of that."

"And now—now for the more immediate future! Where are you going to hide? How would it be if you caught the Paris express from Charing Cross? Almost an hour to spare. Don't go on to Paris. Stop at Calais. Live in Calais. He'd never think of looking for you in Calais."

"It's like my luck," he said, "to spend my last hours on earth with an ass." But I was not offended. "And a treacherous ass," he strangely added, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had been holding in his hand. I glanced at the writing on it—some sort of gibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.

"Come, Soames! pull yourself together! This isn't a mere matter of life and death. It's a question of eternal torment, mind you! You don't mean to say you're going to wait limply here till the Devil comes to fetch you?"

"I can't do anything else. I've no choice."

"Come! This is 'trusting and encouraging' with a vengeance! This'
is Diabolism run mad!" I filled his glass with wine. "Surely, now that
you've seen the brute--- "

"It's no good abusing him."

"You must admit there's nothing Miltonic about him, Soames."

"I don't say he's not rather different from what I expected."

"He's a vulgarian, he's a swell-mobsman, he's the sort of man who hangs about the corridors of trains going to the Riviera and steals ladies' jewel-cases. Imagine eternal torment presided over by him.'"

"You don't suppose I look forward to it, do you?"

"Then why not slip quietly out of the way?"

Again and again I filled his glass, and always, mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honour of the human race he ought to make some show of resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for him. "Besides," he said, "can't you understand that I'm in his power? You saw him touch me, didn't you? There's an end of it. I've no will. I'm sealed."

I made a gesture of despair. .He went on repeating the word

"sealed." I began to realise that the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder! Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged him to eat at any rate some bread. It was maddening to think that he, who had so much to tell, might tell nothing. "How was it all," I asked, "yonder? Come! Tell me your adventures."

"They'd make first-rate 'copy,' wouldn't they?"

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Soames, and I make all possible allowances; but what earthly right have you to insinuate that I should make 'copy,' as you call it, out of you?"

The poor fellow pressed his hands to his forehead. "I don't know," he said. "I had some reason, I know. . . . I'll try to remember."

"That's right. Try to remember everything. Eat a little more bread. What did the reading-room look like?"

"Much as usual," he at length muttered.

"Many people there?"

"Usual sort of number."

"What did they look like?"

Soames tried to visualise them. "They all," he presently remembered, "looked very like one another." My mind took a fearsome leap. "All dressed in Jaeger?" "Yes. I think so. Greyish-yellowish stuff."

"A sort of uniform?" He nodded. "With a number on it, perhaps? —a number on a large disc of metal sewn on to the left sleeve? DKF 78,910—that sort of thing?" It was even so. "And all of them—men and women alike—looking very well-cared-for? very Utopian? and smelling rather strongly of carbolic? and all of them quite hairless?" I was right every time. Soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless or shorn. "I hadn't time to look at them very closely," he explained.

"No, of course not. But---------- "

"They stared at me, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal of attention." At last he had done that! "I think I rather scared them. They moved away whenever I came near. They followed me about at a distance, wherever I went. The men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to make inquires."

"What did you do when you arrived?"

Well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course—to the S volumes—and had stood long before SN-SOF, unable to take this volume out of the shelf, because his heart was beating so. . . . At first, he said, he wasn't disapponted—he only thought there was some new arrangement. He went to the middle desk and asked where the catalogue of twentieth-century books was kept. He gathered that there was still only one catalogue. Again he looked up his name, stared at the three little pasted slips he had known so well. Then he went and sat down for a long time. . . .

"And then," he droned, "I looked up the 'Dictionary of National Biography' and some encyclopaedias. ... I went back to the middle desk and asked what was the best modern book on late nineteenth-century literature. They told me Mr. T. K. Nupton's book was considered the best. I looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form

for it. It was brought to me. My name wasn't in the index, but-----

Yes!" he said with a sudden change of tone. "That's what I'd forgotten. Where's that bit of paper? Give it me back."

I, too, had forgotten that cryptic screed. I found it fallen on the floor, and handed it to him.

He smoothed it out, nodding and smiling at me disagreeably. "I found myself glancing through Nupton's book," he resumed. "Not very easy reading. Some sort of phonetic spelling. ... All the modem books I saw were phonetic."

"Then I don't want to hear any more, Soames, please."

"The proper names seemed all to be spelled in the old way. But for that, I mightn't have noticed my own name."

"Your own name? Really? Soames, I'm very glad."

"And yours."

"No!"

"I thought I should find you waiting here to-night. So I took the trouble to copy out the passage. Read it."

I snatched the paper. Soames' handwriting was characteristically dim. It, and the noisome spelling, and my excitement, made me all the slower to grasp what T. K. Nupton was driving at.

The document lies before me at this moment. Strange that the words I here copy out for you were copied out for me by poor Soames just seventy-eight years hence. . . .

From p. 234 of "Inglish Littracher 1890-1900" bi T. K. Nupton, publishd bi th Stait, 1992: 146

"Fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimd Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twentieth cenchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld 'Enoch Soames'—a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire but not without vallu az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteen-ninetiz took themselvz. Nou that the littreri profeshn haz bin augan-ized az a departmnt of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an hav lernt ter doo their duti without thort ov th morro. 'Th laibrer iz werthi ov hiz hire/ an that iz aul. Thank hewn we hav no Enoch Soameses amung us to-dai!"

I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I com-
mend to my reader) I was able to master them, little by little. The
clearer they became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress
and horror. Tire whole thing was a nightmare. Afar, the great grisly
background of what was in store for the poor dear art of letters; here,
at the table, fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor
fellow whom—whom evidently . . . but no: whatever down-grade
my character might take in coming years, I should never be such a
brute as to-------

Again I examined the screed. "Immajnari"—but here Soames was, no more imaginary, alas! than I. And "labud"—what on earth was that? (To this day, I have never made out that word.) "It's all very— baffling," I at length stammered.

Soames said nothing, but cruelly did not cease to look at me.

"Are you sure," I temporised, "quite sure you copied the thing out correctly?"

"Quite."

"Well, then it's this wretched Nupton who must have made—must
be going to make—some idiotic mistake. . . . Look here, Soames!
you know me better than to suppose that I . . . After all, the name
'Max Beerbohm' is not at all an uncommon one, and there must be
several Enoch Soamses running around—or rather, 'Enoch Soames' is
a name that might occur to any one writing a story. And I don't write
stories: I'm an essayist, an observer, a recorder. ... I admit that it's
an extraordinary coincidence. But you must see------------- "

"I see the whole thing," said Soames quietly. And he added, with a touch of his old manner, but with more dignity than I had ever known in him, "Parlons d'autre chose."

I accepted that suggestion very promptly. I returned straight to the more immediate future. I spent most of the long evening in renewed appeals to Soames to slip away and seek refuge somewhere. I remember saying at last that if indeed I was destined to write about him, the supposed "stauri" had better have at least a happy ending. Soames repeated those last three words in a tone of intense scorn. "In Life and in Art," he said, "all that matters is an inevitable ending."

"But," I urged, more hopeful than I felt, "an ending that can be avoided isn't inevitable."

"You aren't an artist," he rasped. "And you're so hopelessly not an artist that, so far from being able to imagine a thing and'make it seem true, you're going to make even a true thing seem as if you'd made it up. You're a miserable bungler. And it's like my luck."

I protested that the miserable bungler was not I—was not going to be I—but T. K. Nupton; and we had a rather heated argument, in the thick of which it suddenly seemed to me that Soames saw he was in the wrong: he had quite physically cowered. But I wondered why —and now I guessed with a cold throb just why—he stared so, past me. The bringer of that "inevitable ending" filled the doorway.

I managed to turn in my chair and to say, not without a semblance of lightness, "Aha, come in!" Dread was indeed rather blunted in me by his looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. The sheen of his tilted hat and of his shirt-front, the repeated twists he was giving to his moustache, and most of all the magnificence of his sneer, gave token that he was there only to be foiled.

He was at our table in a stride. "I am sorry," he sneered witheringly,
"to break up your pleasant party, but---- "

"You don't: you complete it," I assured him. "Mr. Soames and I want to have a little talk with you. Won't you sit? Mr. Soames got nothing—frankly nothing—by his journey this afternoon. We don't wish to say that the whole thing was a swindle—a common swindle. On the contrary, we believe you meant well. But of course the bargain, such as it was, is off."

The Devil gave no verbal answer. He merely looked at Soames and pointed with rigid forefinger to the door. Soames was wretchedly rising from his chair when, with a desperate quick gesture, I swept together two dinner-knives that were on the table, and laid their blades across each other. The Devil stepped sharp back against the table behind him, averting his face and shuddering.

"You are not superstitious!" he hissed.

"Not at all," I smiled.

"Soames!" he said as to an underling, but without turning his face, "put those knives straight!"

With an inhibitive gesture to my friend, "Mr. Soames," I said emphatically to the Devil, "is a Catholic Diabolist"; but my poor friend did the Devil's bidding, not mine; and now, with his master's eyes again fixed on him, he arose, he shuffled past me. I tried to speak. It was he that spoke. "Try," was the prayer he threw back at me as the Devil pushed him roughly out through the door, "try to make them know that I did exist!"

In another instant I too was through that door. I stood staring all ways—up the street, across it, down it. There was moonlight and lamplight, but there was not Soames nor that other.

Dazed, I stood there. Dazed, I turned back, at length, into the little room; and I suppose I paid Berthe or Rose for my dinner and luncheon, and for Soames': I hope so, for I never went to the Vingtième again. Ever since that night I have avoided Greek Street altogether. And for years I did not set foot even in Soho Square, because on that same night it was there that I paced and loitered, long and long, with some such dull sense of hope as a man has in not straying far from the place where he has lost something. . . . "Round and round the shut-ter'd Square"—that line came back to me on my lonely beat, and with it the whole stanza, ringing in my brain and bearing in on me how tragically different from the happy scene imagined by him was the poet's actual experience of that prince in whom of all princes we should put not our trust.

But—strange how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, roves and ranges!—I remember pausing before a wide doorstep and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the "stony-hearted step-mother" of them both, and came back bearing that "glass of port wine and spices" but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very doorstep that the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered Ann's fate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy-friend; and presently I blamed myself for letting the past override the present. Poor vanished Soames!

And for myself, too, I began to be troubled. What had I better do? Would there be a hue and cry—Mysterious Disappearance of an Author, and all that? He had last been seen lunching and dining in my company. Hadn't I better get a hansom and drive straight to Scotland Yard? . . . They would think I was a lunatic. After all, I reassured myself, London was a very large place, and one very dim figure might easily drop out of it unobserved—now especially, in the blinding glare of the near Jubilee. Better say nothing at all, I thought.

And I was right. Soames' disappearance made no stir at all. He was utterly forgotten before any one, so far as I am aware, noticed that he was no longer hanging around. Now and again some poet or prosaist may have said to another, "What has become of that man Soames?" but I never heard any such question asked. The solicitor through whom he was paid his annuity may be presumed to have made inquiries, but no echo of these resounded. There was something rather ghastly to me in the general unconsciousness that Soames had existed, and more than once I caught myself wondering whether Nupton, that babe unborn, were going to be right in thinking him a figment of my brain.

In that extract from Nupton's repulsive book there is one point which perhaps puzzles you. How is it that the author, though I have here mentioned him by name and have quoted the exact words he is going to write, is not going to grasp the obvious corollary that I have invented nothing? The answer can be only this: Nupton will not have read the later passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a serious fault in any one who undertakes to do scholar's work. And I hope these words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to Nupton and be the undoing of Nupton.

I like to think that some time between 1992 and 1997 somebody will have looked up this memoir, and will have forced on the world his inevitable and startling conclusions. And I have reasons for believing that this will be so. You realise that the reading-room into which Soames was projected by the Devil was in all respects precisely as it will be on the afternoon of June 3, 1997. You realise, therefore, that on that afternoon, when it comes round, there the self-same crowd will be, and there Soames too will be, punctually, he and they doing precisely what they did before. Recall now Soames' account of the sensation he made. You may say that the mere difference of his costume was enough to make him sensational in that uniformed crowd. You wouldn't say so if you had ever seen him. I assure you that in no period could Soames be anything but dim. The fact that people are going to stare at him, and follow him around, and seem afraid of him, can be explained only on the hypothesis that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostly visitation. They will have been awfully waiting to see whether he really would come. And when he does come the effect will of course be—awful.

An authentic, guaranteed, proven ghost, but—only a ghost, alas! Only that. In his first visit, Soames was a creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures into whose midst he was projected were but ghosts, I take it—solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time, that building and those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the world actually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one brief escape, this one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget him for long. He is where he is, and forever. The more rigid moralists among you may say he has only himself to blame. For my part, I think he has been very hardly used. It is well that vanity should be chastened; and Enoch Soames' vanity was, I admit, above the average, and called for special treatment. But there was no need for vindictiveness. You say he contracted to pay the price he is paying; yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Well-informed in all things, the Devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the Devil seems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that day at the Vingtième. Only once, however, have I seen him at close quarters. This was in Paris. I was walking, one afternoon, along the Rue d'Antin, when I saw him advancing from the opposite direction —over-dressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane, and altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up to my full height. But—well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to any body whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself: to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the Devil, that I nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmost haughtiness.

To be cut—deliberately cut—by him.' I was, I still am, furious at having had that happen to me.

Reprinted by permission of Stephen Aske, London.

Between the Minute and the Hour

By A. M. BURRAGE

There is no more commonplace stretch of thoroughfare in the United Kingdom than the London Road at Nesthall between Station Road and Beryl Avenue. A row of small, dingy villas and a row of new and diminutive shops face each other across the tram-lines which stretch between Hammersmith and a distant suburb, once a country town. Nearly all of these shops are for the sale of sweets, tobacco, and newspapers, so that it seems strange that there should be a livelihood in any one of them.

Charles Trimmer kept the fifth shop down, as you would count them with your back to London. His commonplace name appeared above his one commonplace window, with "Newsagent" on one side of it and "Tobacconist" on the other. The window displayed an assortment of cheap sweets in bottles and open boxes, picture-postcards in doubtful taste, flies when in season, and dummy packets of tobacco and cigarettes.

Trimmer himself was commonplace in mind and appearance to match his surroundings and his avocation. If I lay particular stress on this, it is because it serves to make this strange narrative the stranger. He was short, turned forty, slightly bald, with a slim, dark, waxed moustache. His hobbies may be said to have consisted of watching professional football—he was a firm "supporter" of Brentford whenever he could get away—and putting odd shillings on horses which seldom won. As he had only his own mouth to feed, the shop kept him without hardship. He lived alone, but an elderly woman came in daily to cook his dinner and do the rougher housework. For the rest, you must imagine him to be a colourless individual, almost without personality, and with, of course, an atrocious accent, part Cockney and part peculiar to the Middlesex suburbs. Yet to this colourless little man in his squalid surroundings befel an adventure the like of which had never before been dreamed.

It was eight o'clock on a Wednesday evening in March, the end of a gusty, drizzling day without a hint of spring in the air. Trimmer's day's work was nearly over. His cold supper lay awaiting him, and in half an hour he would be free to stroll down to the Station Hotel and drink his usual two half-pints of bitter beer. With a cigarette hanging from his under-lip, he was approaching the shop door, to close it, when two ragged figures entered.

The first was a woman, short, swarthy, grey-haired, and indescribably dirty, with an enormous cast in her left eye which seemed in perpetual contemplation of the bridge of her nose. She was followed by a tall, rickety boy in rags who might have been either her son or her grandson. Trimmer, knowing from experience that these were not likely to be customers, immediately assumed an air of hostility.

"Spare us a copper or a mouthful o' food, kind gentleman!" the
woman whined. "I've got two dear little bybies starvin'-- "

Trimmer made a gesture towards the door.

" 'Op it!" he said. "I've got precious little for myself, let alone for you."

"I'll give you a wish in exchange, pretty gentleman—a good wish,
a wish o' wonderment for you. You wouldn't grudge a bit o' bread
for my precious children, pretty gentleman? You--- "

Trimmer advanced upon her almost threateningly.

"Pop orf!" he cried. "Did you 'ear what I said? Pop orf!"

The ragged woman drew herself up so that she seemed to grow much taller. She stared at him with an intensity that made him fall back a step as if her very gaze were a concrete thing which had pushed him. She raised her open hands above the level of her shoulders.

"Then may the bitterest curse----- "

In a moment the boy had caught one of her hands and was trying to clap his own hand over her mouth.

"Mother, mother," he cried, "for God's sake------ "

Trimmer stared at the pair in something like horror. He did not believe in curses. He had all the materialism of the true Cockney. But the intensity of the woman's manner, the sudden queemess in her eyes for which the cast did not wholly account, and the boy's evident fear worked on his undeveloped imagination.

"All right, missus," he said, a little surprised at his own soothing tone. "You don't want to tyke on like that."

The intensity of the woman's manner subsided a little.

"A bite o' food for me and my starvin' family. 'Twas all I asked."

Trimmer persuaded himself that he was sorry for her. He was not essentially ill-natured. Casting about in his mind for something that he could give her without leaving himself the poorer, he bethought him of some biscuits which had gone soft and pappy through having been kept too long in stock. He went to the tin, emptied its contents into a large bag, and handed the bag to the woman.

She took it without thanks, picked out a biscuit, and nibbled at it. He saw the queerness come back into her eyes.

"A strange gift you have given me, master," she said, "and a strange gift I give you in return. When night turns to morning, between the minute and the hour is your time."

Once more the boy seemed disturbed.

"Mother!" he cried, in expostulation.

"I have said what I have said," she answered. "The end shall be of his own seeking. Between the minute and the hour!"

With that, slowly, they passed out of the shop. Trimmer, as he locked the door behind them, reflected that it was a "rum start." He noticed that his hand trembled as it turned the key.

For no reason that he could translate into the language of his own thoughts the woman's words haunted Trimmer. He denied to himself that he was in any way afraid; he was merely curious as to what meaning might be attached to what she had said. Had she a real thought in her head, or had she been trying to frighten him with meaningless rubbish?

Several days passed and Trimmer, in his leisure, still vexed his mind with the conundrum. He answered it in a half satisfactory manner. When night turned to morning was technically twelve o'clock midnight. After that it was called A.M., which to him meant nothing. Between the minute and the hour! That must mean the minute before midnight. But why was that his time? What had she meant by her vague threat, if, indeed, she had meant anything at all?

Trimmer was generally in bed before eleven and asleep very shortly afterwards, but about ten days later he sat up late in the closed shop, working at his accounts. He was almost done when he glanced up at the little striking clock which he kept on the shelf behind the counter. It wanted just two minutes to the hour of midnight.

Trimmer was not nervous by temperament, but a man sitting up late alone and at work may be excused if he finds himself the victim of strange fancies. In another minute it would be what the old woman had called his time, and once again he asked himself what she had meant by that. Had she meant that he would die at that hour?

He rose and went to the door of the shop, his gaze still on the clock. The upper panels of the door were glass and screened by a green linen blind. Outside he could hear a late tram, moaning on its way to the depot. He was grateful for this friendly sound from the familiar workaday world.

He lifted the curtain and peered through the glass, and then, before his eyes were accustomed to the darkness outside and he could see anything save his own wan reflection, something happened which sent a sudden rush of blood to his heart. The noise of the tram had ceased, and ceased in such a way that the crack of a pistol would have been less startling than this sudden silence. It was not that the tram had suddenly stopped. Afterwards, fumbling for phrases, he recorded that the sound "disappeared." This is a contradiction in terms, but it is sufficiently graphic to serve for what he intended to express.

A moment later, and he was looking out upon an altered world. There were no tram-lines, no pavement, no houses opposite. He saw coarse, greyish grasses stirring in a wind which cried out in an unfamiliar voice. Trembling violently, he unlocked the door and looked out.

A slim crescent of moon and a few stars dimly illumined a landscape without houses, a place grown suddenly strange and dreadful.. Where the opposite villas should have been was the edge of a forest, thick and black and menacing. He stepped out, and his foot slid through spongy grass, ankle-deep in mud and slime. He looked back fearfully, and there was his shop with its open door, standing alone. The other jerry-built shops which linked up with it had vanished. It seemed forlorn and ridiculous and out of place, a toy shop standing alone in a wilderness.

Something cold fell on to his hand and made him start. Instantly he knew that it was a drop of sweat. His hair was saturated, his face running. Then he told himself that this was nightmare, that if he could but cry out aloud he would wake up. He cried out and heard his voice ring out hoarsely over the surrounding desolation. From the forest, the cry of some wild animal answered him.

No, this was no dream, or, if it were, it was one of a kind altogether beyond his experience. Where was he? And how had he come to step out of his door into some strange place thousands of miles away from Nesthall?

But was he thousands of miles or—thousands of years? An un-wontedly quick perception made him ask the question of himself. The land around him was flat, after the dreary nature of Middlesex. Fronting him, a few miles away, was the one hill which he had seen every day of his life, so that he knew by heart the outline of it against the sky. But it was Harrow Hill no more. A dense forest climbed its slope. And over all there brooded an aching silence charged with terror.

Curiosity had in him, to some extent, the better of fear. Cautiously he moved a little away from his shop, but cast continual backward glances at it to make sure that it was still there, while he stepped lightly and carefully over the swampy ground. Away to the left were open marshlands, and he could see a wide arc of the horizon. He could see no river, but vaguely he made out the contours of what he knew to be the Thames Valley. And not a house nor any living thing in sight!

He turned once more to look at his shop. It was still there, its open door spilling light on the bog grasses which grew to the edge of the threshold. And as he turned he saw a low hill away to his half-left—a hill which he could not recognize. He had taken a dozen steps towards it when his heart missed a beat, and he heard himself scream out aloud in an agony of terror. The hill moved.'

It was not a slow movement. There was something impetuous and savage in this sudden heaving-up of the huge mound. With movement the mass took shape from shapelessness. He saw outlined against the dim sky a pair of blunt ears set on a flat, brainless, reptilian head. Shapeless webbed feet tore at the ground in the ungainly lifting of the huge and beastly carcase. Two dull red lights suddenly burned at Trimmer, and he realized that the monster was staring at him.

As it stared he saw the long slit of a mouth open, and a great tongue, a dirty white in colour, passed in slobberly expectation over the greenish lips. There was that about the movement which caused the soul of Trimmer to grow sick within him.

New terror broke the spell cast by the old. The nerves of motion were given back to him. He turned and ran, screaming wildly, arms outflung, towards the open door of his shop.

Behind him he heard the Tiring lumbering in clumsy pursuit. The ground reverberated suddenly under its huge webbed feet. He heard the long reptilian body flopping heavily in his wake, heard its open mouth emitting strange wheezing cries full of a hateful yearning.

It was moving quickly, too. The sounds behind him gained upon him with a maddening rapidity. He could smell the creature's hot foetid breath. With one last despairing effort he gained the door of his shop and flung himself across the threshold into what seemed but a paltry chance of safety. Frenziedly he kicked out behind him at the door, closing it with a crash, and fell gasping across his counter.

Almost on the instant the little clock on the shelf began to strike. And sharp upon the stroke he heard a sudden moaning outside. His strained heart leaped again, but in the fraction of a moment he had recognized the sound. It was the tram resuming what had seemed to him its interrupted journey.

The clock went on striking. He looked at it in blank bewilderment. It was striking the hour of twelve, midnight.

Now he had paid little attention to time, but estimated that he had spent something like half an hour in the strange and awful world outside his shop. Yet it had turned a minute to twelve when the change happened. And now here was his clock only just striking the hour.

He staggered to the door, and as he did so the tram passed, throwing a procession of twinkling lights along the top of his window. The curtain on the door was still raised a little, showing where he had peeped out. He looked through and saw gleaming tram-rails, the familiar pillar-box on the comer, the garden gate of Holmecroft opposite. Wherever he had been he was—and he thanked God for it—back in To-day.

The clock finished striking the hour, the sounds of the tram grew fainter in the distance, and silence recaptured her hold upon the night.

Trimmer edged away from the door. He was still sweating profusely, and his heart was still racing. He looked down at his feet. His cheap, worn boots were quite dry.

"God!" he ejaculated aloud. "What a dream!"

A fit of shuddering seized him.

"That thing! Ugh! It was like one of them things on the postcards what chase the pre'istoric blokes—only worse! I didn't dream that! I couldn't have done! I couldn't have run like that and yelled like I did, in a dream. I couldn't have been so surprised, and reasoned things out so clear! Besides, 'ow could I have fallen asleep like that in one second? No, it wasn't no dream! Then what—what in God's name was it?"

Next day Trimmer s few regular customers noticed that he looked ill and preoccupied. He handed the wrong article and the wrong change. His lips moved as if he were talking to himself.

As a matter of fact, he was trying to convince himself that his experience of the night before was a dream—trying and failing. What he half believed was something at which his Cockney common-sense rose in rebellion. By some law contrary to that of Nature he had been free to wander in another age while Time, as we count it, had stood still and waited for him. Either that or he was mad.

He determined to keep his clock exactly right according to Greenwich time, and be on the watch that night just before the stroke of twelve to see if the same thing happened again. But this time he would not venture out of To-day, would not leave his shop and risk the nameless dangers that awaited him in another age.

Eagerly and yet fearfully he awaited the coming of night. At nine o'clock he went down to the Station Hotel and stayed there until closing time, drinking brandy. Having returned to his shop, he paced the parlour at the back until ten minutes to twelve, when he took a candle into the shop and waited.

Fearfully he stared through the lifted blind on the door and out
over the steam-tarred road. It was raining gently, and he saw the
drops dancing on the surface of a puddle. He watched them until
he had almost hypnotized himself; until----------

He felt himself start violently. It was as if the road and the house opposite had given themselves a sudden, convulsive twitch. Suddenly and amazingly it was not dark, but twilight. Opposite him, instead of a row of houses, was a hedge, with a rude rustic gate set in it. He found himself looking across fields. He saw a cluster of cows, a haystack, beyond a further hedge the upturned shafts of a derelict plough.

The road was still there, but it had changed out of knowledge. It was narrower, rutted, and edged with grass. As he looked he heard a jingling of bells, and a phaeton, with big yellow wheels, drawn by a high-stepping white horse, came gliding past.

Wonder rather than fear was his predominating emotion. The musical tooting of a horn startled him, and he heard the crisp sound of trotting horses and the lumbering of heavy wheels.

Into view came a coach and four, with passengers inside and out, a driver, with many capes, and a guard perched up behind pointing his long, slim horn at Harrow Hill. Immediately he recognized their clothes as something like those he had seen in pictures, on the covers of the boys' highwaymen stories he read and sold.

"It's safe enough," he reflected, with a strange elation. "Why, it ain't more than a hundred and fifty years ago!"

He wrenched open the door of his shop and passed out into the twilight of a June evening in the eighteenth century. Looking back, he saw that his shop stood alone as before, but this time it broke the line of a hawthorn hedge, on which red and white blossom was decaying and dying. The scent of it blended in his nostrils with the odour of new-mown hay.

He felt now eager and confident, entirely fearless. He was safe from the prehistoric horror that had attacked him the night before. Why, he was in an age of beer and constables and cricket matches.

With light steps he began to walk up the road towards London. It was his privilege now to wander without danger in another age, and see things which no other living man had ever seen. An old yokel, leaning against a gate, stared at him, went on staring, and, as he drew nearer, climbed the gate and made his way hurriedly across a hayfield. This reminded him that he looked as strange to the people of this age as they looked to him. He wished he had known, so that he could have hired an old costume and thus walked inconspicuously among them.

He must have walked half a mile without coming upon one single familiar landmark. A finger-post told him what he already knew— that he was four miles from Ealing Village. He paused outside an inn to read a notice which announced that the stage-coach Highflyer, plying between London and Oxford, would arrive at the George at Ealing (d.v.) at 10.45 ^A-^M- ^on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He was turning away, having read the bill, when he first saw Miss Marjory.

She was, if you please, a full seventeen years of age, and husband-high according to the custom of her times. She wore a prim little bonnet, a costume of royal blue, and carried a silk parasol which, when open, must have looked ludicrously small. He had one full glance at her piquantly pretty face and saw, for the fraction of an instant, great blue eyes staring at him in frank wonderment. She lowered her gaze abruptly, with an air of conscious modesty, when she saw that he had observed her.

Hitherto, as far as the strange circumstances permitted, Trimmer had felt entirely normal. That is to say that his emotions and outlook were in keeping with a man of his age, station, education and habit of mind. Now came a change, sudden, bewildering, well-nigh overwhelming.

Once he had been in a state which, for want of a better phrase, he called being "in love." He had "walked out" with a young lady who was a draper's assistant. After a while she had deserted him because of the superior attractions of a young clerk in a warehouse. He had been wounded, but not deeply wounded. Marriage was not necessary to his temperament, or, as he put it, he could get along without women. Not for the last sixteen years had he thought of love until that moment, when he, the waif of another century, beheld Miss Marjory.

It was as if some strange secret were revealed to him on the instant. The ecstasy of love which engulfed him like a wave told him that here was his true mate, his complement according to Nature, bom into this world, alas! one hundred and fifty years too early for him. Yet, for all that, by a miracle, by witchcraft, by some oversetting of the normal laws, the gulf had been bridged, and they stood now face to face. He walked towards her, fumbling in his mind for something to say, some gallantry preliminary to street flirtations such as happened around him every day.

"Good evening, miss," he said.

He saw the blush in her cheek deepen, and she answered without regarding him:

"Oh, sir, I pray you not to molest me. I am an honest maiden alone and unprotected."

"I'm not molestin' you, miss. And you needn't be alone and unprotected unless you like."

The maiden's eyelids flickered up and then down again.

"Oh, fie on you, sir!" she said. "Fie on you for a bold man! I would have you know that my father is a highly respected mercer and drives into London daily in his own chaise. I have been brought up to learn all the polite accomplishments. 'Twould not be seemly for me to walk and talk with strangers."

"There's exceptions to every rule, miss."

Once more she gave him a quick modest glance.

"Nay, sir, but you have a pretty wit. 'Tis said that curiosity is a permitted weakness to us women. I vow that you are a foreigner. Your accents and strange attire betray you. Yet I have not the wit to guess whence you come, nor the boldness to ask."

"I'm as English as you are, miss," Trimmer protested, a little hurt.

The ready blush came once more to her cheek.

"Your pardon, sir, if I did mistake you for one of those mincing Frenchies. Nay, be not offended. I have heard tell that there is something vastly attractive about a Frenchy, so, if I made the error, I

Oh, why does my tongue betray my modesty!"

"I don't know, miss. But what about a little walk?"

She broke into a delightful little laugh.

"Sir, you speak a strange tongue and wear strange clothes. Yet I confess I find both to my mind. Doubtless you wonder how it is that you find a young lady like myself promenading alone at fall of evening. Ah, me, I fear that Satan is enthroned in my heart! I am acting thus to punish my papa."

Trimmer made an incoherent noise.

"He promised to take me to Bath, and broke his promise," she continued. "Oh, sir, what crimes are done to the young in the name of Business! He has not the time, if I would credit such a tale! So, to serve him, he shall hear that his daughter walked abroad at evening unattended, like any common Poll or Moll. You may walk with me a few yards if it be your pleasure, sir—but only a few yards. I would not have my papa too angry with his Marjory."

From then he had no count of time. He walked with her in a sort of dream-ecstasy, while veil after veil of darkness fell over the fields of pasture and half-grown corn. When at last she insisted that the time had come for parting he stole a kiss from her, a theft at which she more than half connived. In a low voice she confessed to him that she was not so sure of her heart as she had been at sunset.

Trimmer walked back on air to where his shop stood, alone and incongruous. He had learned the true meaning of love, and was drunk with an emotion which hitherto he had scarcely sipped. They had made an assignation for the following evening; for he believed that he had been fated to meet her, and that his shop door would let him out once more into the eighteenth century.

When he returned to his shop he was aware of one strange thing —that while it was visible to him it was invisible to others in the world to which it gave him access. He expected to find a crowd around it on his return, so queer and incongruous must it have looked to eighteenth-century eyes. But only a rustic couple was strolling in the moonlight, on the other side of the road, and as he crossed the threshold it must have seemed to them that he had vanished into thin air, for he heard a shrill scream, which ceased on the instant as the clock struck the first beat of twelve.

He was back once more in the twentieth century, his heart full of a girl who was a hundred and fifty years away. He was like a boy after his first kiss under a moonlit hedge. To-morrow night, he promised himself, if he could get back to the eighteenth century, he would remain in it, marry Marjory and live out his life, secure in the knowledge that Time was standing still and awaiting his return.

Next morning the change in Charles Trimmer was still more marked. There was a far-off look in his eyes and a strange smile on his lips.

"If I didn't know ole Charlie," said Mr. Bunce, the butcher, to a friend, over the midday glass, "I should think he was in love."

Trimmer cared little about what his neighbours thought of him, nor had he any longer a regard for his business. His whole mind was centred upon the coming of midnight when, perhaps, he could step out across the years and take Marjory into his arms. He had no thought for anything else. Not having heard of La Belle Dame Sans Merci he saw no danger in his obsession. If he had it would have been the same.

Strangely enough he did not trouble himself greatly as to how he had come by this strange gift. He gave little thought to the old crosseyed woman who had bestowed it upon him, nor did he speculate much as to what strange powers she possessed. Enough that the gift was his.

It was a world of dazzling white which Trimmer saw when he peeped through the blind that night. It startled him a little, for he had not thought of seeing snow. There was no saying now what period he would step into outside his shop. Snow was like a mask on the face of Nature.

For a thinking space he was doubtful if he should venture out, but the fear of missing Marjory compelled him. His teeth chattered as he plunged knee-deep into a drift, but he scrambled up over a small mound, on which the snow was only ankle-deep, and beneath him the surface was hard, possibly that of a road. He turned his face towards London, wondering whether the snow concealed the friendly pastures of the eighteenth century or the wilderness of some un-guessed-at period of time.

Away to his left, looking in a straight line midway between Harrow Hill and London, he could see a forest holding aloft a canopy of snow. He had forgotten if he had seen a wood in that direction on the occasion when he had met Marjory. He tried to rack his brains as he trudged on, shivering, hands deep in pockets.

He had walked perhaps half a mile on what certainly seemed some sort of a track, without passing a house or any living person, when a sound, which he associated with civilization, smote upon his ears. It was the low, mournful howling of a dog.

The howling was taken up by other dogs, he could not guess how many, but the effect of it was weird and infinitely mournful. As nearly as he was able to locate them, the sounds came from the direction of the forest.

Vaguely he wondered whose dogs they were and why they were howling. Perhaps they were cold, poor devils. People in less advanced times were very likely cruel to their dogs. They left them out, even on such nights as this.

He trudged on, listening to this intermittent howling and baying, which became more frequent and sounded nearer. Vague fears began to assail him. He was not afraid of dogs which had been made domestic pets—the Fidos and Rovers and Peters of the happy twentieth century. But suppose these were savage—wild?

He halted doubtfully, and as he halted he saw some of them for the first time. There were six of them, and they were streaming across the snowfield from the direction of the forest, one slightly in advance of the others. They were barking and squealing, like hounds hot upon a scent. Their leader, a lean grey brute, raised his head, and uttered a loud yelp, and as he did so Trimmer saw that his eyes were luminous and burning, like two red coals.

In response to the creature's yelp the whole fringe of the wood became alive with his kind. The darkness was specked with vicious luminous eyes. Over the snowfield came the pack, as a black cloud crosses the sky. Trimmer uttered a little sharp cry of fear.

"Wolves!" he gasped aloud. "Wolves!"

As he turned and ran an echo of an old history lesson came back to his mind. He remembered having been told that hundreds and hundreds of years ago the English forests were haunted by wolves, which, maddened by hunger in the winter-time, would attack and kill whosoever ventured abroad. He ran like a blind man, stumbling and slipping, with horror and despair storming at his heart.

In the distance he could see his shop, with the safe warm light gleaming like a beacon, but he knew that he could never reach it. The yelping of his pursuers grew nearer every moment. Already he could hear their scampering in the snow behind him. A minute later, and a lean body shot past his thigh, just missing him. He heard the snap of the brute's jaws as it rolled over in the snow. Then sharp teeth gripped and tore the calf of one of his legs, and he heard amid his terror a worrying snarl as he tried to kick himself free.

More teeth gripped his shoulder. There was a weight on his back— more weight—and terror which drugged physical pain. One arm was seized above the elbow. They were all over him now, snapping, snarling, tearing and worrying. Down they dragged him—down into the snow—down. . . .

The policeman, passing the shop of Charles Trimmer at nine in the morning, was surprised to find it not yet open. The daily papers had been left in a pile on the doorstep by the van-boy who had evidently despaired of making any one hear. Being suspicious, the constable examined the door and found that the green blind was lifted a little. Through the chink he could see an eye peering out; but it was an eye which seemed not to see.

Having called out several times and rapped on the glass without evoking any reply, the policeman broke in at the back. He found Charles Trimmer kneeling by the shop door, peering out under the green blind. He was quite dead.

There was not a mark on him, but a doctor giving evidence before the coroner explained that his heart was in a bad way—it weighed a great deal more than a man's heart ought to weigh—and he had been liable for some time to die suddenly. A nightmare or any sudden shock might have brought this about at any time.

The verdict was in accordance with the evidence.

There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.

There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.

Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went in to town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.

At last the mother said, "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.

And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money.' There must be more money.' The children could hear it all the time, though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modem rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's-house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money!"

It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more selfconsciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: "There must be more money."

Yet nobody ever said it aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one evei says: "We are breathing!" in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.

"Mother!" said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we keep a car of our own? Why do we always use uncle's, or else a taxi?"

"Because we're the poor members ,of the family," said the mother. "But why are we, mother?"

"Well—I suppose," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's because your father has no luck."

The boy was silent for some time.

"Is luck money, mother?" he asked, rather timidly.

"No, Paul! Not quite. It's what causes you to have money."

"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle Oscar said filthy Iucker, it meant money."

"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother. "But it's lucre, not luck."

"Oh!" said the boy. "Then what is luck, mother?"

"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be bom lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."

"Oh! Will you! And is father not lucky?"

"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.

The boy watched her with unsure eyes.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know. Nobody ever knows why one person is lucky and another unlucky."

"Don't they? Nobody at all? Does nobody know?" "Perhaps God! But He never tells."

"He ought to, then. And aren't you lucky, either, mother?" "I can't be, if I married an unlucky husband." "But by yourself, aren't you?"

"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed." "Why?"

"Well—never mind! Perhaps I'm not really," she said.

The child looked at her, to see if she meant it. But he saw, by the lines of her mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him.

"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky person." "Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh. He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had said it. "God told me," he asserted, brazening it out.

"I hope He did, dear!" she said, again with a laugh, but rather bitter. "He did, mother!"

"Excellent!" said the mother, using one of her husband's exclamations.

The boy saw she did not believe him; or rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered him somewhat, and made him want to compel her attention.

He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way, seeking for the clue to "luck." Absorbed, taking no heed of other people, he went about with a sort of stealth, seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. When the two girls were playing dolls, in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily. Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them. The little girls dared not speak to him.

When he had ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy bright.

"Now!" he would silently command the snorting steed. "Now take me to where there is luck! Now take me!"

And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for. He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he forced it. So he would mount again, and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there. He knew he could get there.

"You'll break your horse, Paul!" said the nurse.

"He's always riding like that! I wish he'd leave off!" said his elder sister Joan.

But he only glared down on them in silence. Nurse gave him up. She could make nothing of him. Anyhow he was growing beyond her.

One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in when he was on one of his furious rides. He did not speak to them.

"Hallo! you young jockey! Riding a winner?" said his uncle.

"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse? You're not a very little boy any longer, you know," said his mother.

But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes. He would speak to nobody when he was in full tilt. His mother watched him with an anxious expression on her face.

At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the mechanical gallop, and slid down.

"Well, I got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.

"Where did you get to?" asked his mother.

"Where I wanted to go to," he flared back at her.

"That's right, son!" said Uncle Oscar. "Don't you stop till you get there. What's the horse's name?"

"He doesn't have a name," said the boy.

"Gets on without all right?" asked the uncle.

"Well, he has different names. He was called Sansovino last week."

"Sansovino, eh? Won the Ascot. How did you know his name?"

"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett," said Joan.

The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew was posted with all the racing news. Bassett, the young gardener who had been wounded in the left foot in the war, and had got his present job through Oscar Cresswell, whose batman he had been, was a perfect blade of the "turf." He lived in the racing events, and the small boy lived with him.

Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.

"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more than tell him, sir," said Bassett, his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.

"And does he ever put anything on a horse he fancies?"

"Well—I don't want to give him away—he's a young sport, a fine sport, sir. Would you mind asking him himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't mind."

Bassett was serious as a church.

The uncle went back to his nephew, and took him off for a ride in the car.

"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a horse?" the uncle asked. The boy watched the handsome man closely. "Why, do you think I oughtn't to?" he parried.

"Not a bit of it! I thought perhaps you might give me a tip for the Lincoln."

The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire. "Honour bright?" said the nephew. "Honour bright, son!" said the uncle. "Well, then, Daffodil."

"Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?"

"I only know the winner," said the boy. "That's Daffodil!"

"Daffodil, eh?"

There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively.

"Uncle!"

"Yes, son?"

"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised Bassett."

"Bassett be damned, old man! What's he got to do with it?"

"We're partners! We've been partners from the first! Uncle, he lent me my first five shillings, which I lost. I promised him, honour bright, it was only between me and him: only you gave me that ten-shilling note I started winning with, so I thought you were lucky. You won't let it go any further, will you?"

The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot blue eyes, set rather close together. The uncle stirred and laughed uneasily.

"Right you are, son! I'll keep your tip private. Daffodil, eh! How much are you putting on him?"

"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that in reserve."

The uncle thought it a good joke.

"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you young romancer? What are you betting, then?"

"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely. "But it's between you and me, Uncle Oscar! Honour bright?"

The uncle burst into a roar of laughter.

"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat Gould," he said, laughing. "But where's your three hundred?"

"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partners."

"You are, are you! And what is Bassett putting on Daffodil?"

"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect. Perhaps he'll go a hundred and fifty."

"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.

"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his uncle. "Bassett keeps a bigger reserve than I do."

Between wonder and amusement, Uncle Oscar was silent. He pursued the matter no further, but he determined to take his nephew with him to the Lincoln races.

"Now, son," he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza, and I'll put five for you on any horse you fancy. What's your pick?"

"Daffodil, uncle!"

"No, not the fiver on Daffodil!"

"I should if it was my own fiver," said the child.

"Good! Good! Right you are! A fiver for me and a fiver for you on Daffodil."

The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire. He pursed his mouth tight, and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his money on Lancelot. Wild with excitement, he flayed his arms up and down, yelling "Lancelot.' Lancelot!" in his French accent.

Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third. The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene. His uncle brought him five five-pound notes: four to one.

"What am I to do with these?" he cried, waving them before the boy's eyes.

"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy. "I expect I have fifteen hundred now: and twenty in reserve: and this twenty." His uncle studied him for some moments.

"Look here, son!" he said. "You're not serious about Bassett and that fifteen hundred, are you?"

"Yes, I am. But it's between you and me, uncle! Honour bright!"

"Honour bright all right, son! But I must talk to Bassett."

"If you'd like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and me, we could all be partners. Only you'd have to promise, honour bright, uncle, not to let it go beyond us three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be lucky, because it was your ten shillings I started winning with. . . ."

Uncle Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into Richmond Park for an afternoon, and there they talked.

"It's like this, you see, sir," Bassett said. "Master Paul would get me talking about racing events, spinning yams, you know, sir. And he was always keen on knowing if I'd made or if I'd lost. It's about a year since, now, that I put five shillings on Blush of Dawn for him: and we lost. Then the luck turned, with that ten shillings he had from you: that we put on Singhalese. And since that time, it's been pretty steady, all things considering. What do you say, Master Paul?"

"We're all right when we're sure," said Paul. "It's when we're not quite sure that we go down."

"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.

"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.

"It's Master Paul, sir," said Bassett, in a secret, religious voice. "It's as if he had it from heaven. Like Daffodil now, for the Lincoln. That was as sure as eggs."

"Did you put anything on Daffodil?" asked Oscar Cresswell.

"Yes, sir. I made my bit."

"And my nephew?"

Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at Paul.

"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Bassett? I told uncle I was putting three hundred on Daffodil."

"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.

"But where's the money?" asked the uncle.

"I keep it safe locked up, sir. Master Paul, he can have it any minute he likes to ask for it."

"What, fifteen hundred pounds?"

"And twenty! And toity, that is, with the twenty he made on the course."

"It's amazing!" said the uncle.

"If Master Paul offers you to be partners, sir, I would, if I were you: if you'll excuse me," said Bassett. Oscar Cresswell thought about it. "I'll see the money," he said.

They drove home again, and sure enough, Bassett came round to the garden-house with fifteen hundred pounds in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left with Joe Glee, in the Turf Commission deposit.

"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm sure.' Then we go strong, for all we're worth. Don't we, Bassett?" "We do that, Master Paul."

"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.

"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure, like about Daffodil," said the boy; "and sometimes I have an idea; and sometimes I haven't even an idea, have I, Bassett? Then we're careful, because we mostly go down."

"You do, do you! And when you're sure, like about Daffodil, what makes you sure, sonny?"

"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily. "I'm sure, you know, uncle; that's all."

"It's as if he had it from heaven, sir," Bassett reiterated.

"I should say so!" said the uncle.

But he became a partner. And when the Leger was coming on, Paul was "sure" about Lively Spark, which was a quite inconsiderable horse. The boy insisted on putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five hundred, and Oscar Cresswell two hundred. Lively Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against him. Paul had made ten thousand.

"You see," he said, "I was absolutely sure of him."

Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.

"Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes me nervous."

"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a long time."

"But what are you going to do with your money?" asked the uncle.

"Of course," said the boy, "I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."

"What might stop whispering?"

"Our house! I hate our house for whispering."

"What does it whisper?"

"Why—why"—the boy fidgeted—"why, I don't know! But it's always short of money, you know, uncle." "I know it, son, I know it."

"You know people send mother writs, don't you, uncle?" "I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.

"And then the house whispers like people laughing at you behind

your back. It's awful, that is! I thought if I was lucky------------- "

"You might stop it," added the uncle.

The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word. "Well then!" said the uncle. "What are we doing?" "I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky," said the boy.

"Why not, son?" "She'd stop me." "I don't think she would."

"Oh!"—and the boy writhed in an odd way—"I don't want her to know, uncle."

"All right, son! We'll manage it without her knowing."

They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand pounds into his hands, which sum was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday, for the next five years.

"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five successive years," said Uncle Oscar. "I hope it won't make it all the harder for her later."

Paul's mother had her birthday in November. The house had been "whispering" worse than ever lately, and even in spite of his luck, Paul could not bear up against it. He was very anxious to see the effect of the birthday letter, telling his mother about the thousand pounds.

When there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals with his parents, as he was beyond the nursery control. His mother went into town nearly every day. She had discovered that she had an odd knack of sketching furs and dress materials, so she worked secretly in the studio of a friend who was the chief "artist" for the leading drapers. She drew the figures of ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the newspaper advertisements. This young woman artist earned several thousand pounds a year, but Paul's mother only made several hundreds, and she was again dissatisfied. She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements.

She was down to breakfast on the morning of her birthday. Paul watched her face as she read her letters. He knew the lawyer's letter. As his mother read it, her face hardened and became more expressionless. Then a cold, determined look came on her mouth. She hid the letter under the pile of others, and said not a word about it.

"Didn't you have anything nice in the post for your birthday, mother?" said Paul.

"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice cold and absent.

She went away to town without saying more.

But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared. He said Paul's mother had had a long interview with the lawyer, asking if the whole five thousand could not be advanced at once, as she was in debt.

"What do you think, uncle?" said the boy.

"I leave it to you, son."

"Oh, let her have it, then! We can get some more with the other," said the boy.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, laddie!" said Uncle Oscar.

"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National; or the Lincolnshire; or else the Derby. I'm sure to know for one of them," said Paul.

So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's mother touched the whole five thousand. Then something very curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly went mad, like a chorus' of frogs on a spring evening. There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father's school, in the following autumn. There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almond-blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: "There must be more money! Oh-h-h! There must be more money! Oh, now, now-w! now-w-w—there must be more money!—more than ever! More than ever!"

It frightened Paul terribly. He studied away at his Latin and Greek with his tutor. But his intense hours were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had gone by: he had not "known," and had lost a hundred pounds. Summer was at hand. He was in agony for the Lincoln. But even for the Lincoln he didn't "know," and he lost fifty pounds. He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.

"Let it alone, son! Don't you bother about it!" urged Uncle Oscar. But it was as if the boy couldn't really hear what his uncle was saying.

"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.

His mother noticed how overwrought he was.

"You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think you'd better," she said, looking down at him anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.

But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.

"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby, mother!" he said. "I couldn't possibly!"

"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy when she was opposed. "Why not? You can still go from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if that's what you wish. No need for you to wait here. Besides, I think you care too much about these races. It's a bad sign. My family has been a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage. I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you, unless you promise to be reasonable about it: go away to the seaside and forget it. You're all nerves!"

"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as you don't send me away till after the Derby," the boy said.

"Send you away from where? Just from this house?"

"Yes," he said, gazing at her.

"Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you loved it!"

He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.

But his mother, after'standing undecided and a little bit sullen for some moments, said:

"Very well, then! Don't go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you don't wish it. But promise me you won't let your nerves go to pieces! Promise you won't think so much about horse-racing and events, as you call them!"

"Oh, no!" said the boy, casually. "I won't think much about them, mother. You needn't worry. I wouldn't worry, mother, if I were you."

"If you were me and I were you," said his mother, "I wonder what we should do!"

"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't you?" the boy repeated.

"I should be awfully glad to know it," she said wearily. "Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean you ought to know you needn't worry!" he insisted.

"Ought I? Then I'll see about it," she said.

Pauls secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name. Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.

"Surely you're too big for a rocking-horse!" his mother had remonstrated.

"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about," had been his quaint answer.

"Do you feel he keeps you company?" she laughed.

"Oh yes! He's very good, he always keeps me company, when I'm there," said Paul.

So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy's bedroom.

The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.

Two night before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-bom, gripped her heart till she could hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in common-sense. But it was too strong. She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. The children's nursery governess was terribly surprised and startled at being rung up in the night.

"Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?"

"Oh, yes, they are quite all right."

"Master Paul? Is he all right?"

"He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and look at him?"

"No!" said Paul's mother reluctantly. "No! Don't trouble. It's all right. Don't sit up. We shall be home fairly soon." She did not want her son's privacy intruded upon.

"Very good," said the governess.

It was about one o'clock when Paul's mother and father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul's mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak. She had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a whisky-and-soda.

And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her son's room. Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise? What was it?

She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God's Name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it was.

Yet she could not place it. She couldn't say what it was. And on and on it went, like a madness.

Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.

The room was dark. Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.

Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging in his rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.

"Paul!" she cried. "Whatever are you doing?" "It's Malabar!" he screamed, in a powerful, strange voice. "It's Malabar!"

His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.

But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever. He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.

"Malabar! It's Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know: it's Malabar!" So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.

"What does he mean by Malabar?" asked the heart-frozen mother. "I don't know," said the father, stonily.

"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked her brother Oscar. "It's one of the horses running for the Derby," was the answer.

And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at fourteen to one.

The third day of the illness was critical: they were watching for a change. The boy, with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.

In the evening, Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, just one moment? Paul's mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thoughts she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.

The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul's mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes at the tossing, dying child.

"Master Paul!" he whispered. "Master Paul! Malabar came in first all right, a clean win. I did as you told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you have; you've got over eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right, Master Paul."

"Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you think I'm lucky, mother? I knew Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that lucky, don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you can go as high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth, Bassett?"

"I went a thousand on it, Master Paul."

"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure—oh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"

"No, you never did," said the mother.

But the boy died in the night.

And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her: "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner."

On the Staircase

By KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD

Probably the least wise way to begin a ghost-story is to say that one does not believe in ghosts. It suggests that one has never seen the real article. Perhaps, in one sense, I never have; yet I am tempted to set down a few facts that I have never turned over to the Society for Psychical Research or discussed at my club. The fact is that I had ingeniously forgotten them until I saw Harry Medway, the specialist— my old classmate—a few years ago. I say "forgotten"; of course, I had not forgotten them, but, in order to carry on the business of life, I had managed to record them, as it were, in sympathetic ink. After I heard what Harry Medway had to say, I took out the loose sheets and turned them to the fire. Then the writing came out strong and clear again—letter by letter, line by line, as fatefully as Belshazzar's "immortal postscript." Did I say that I do not believe in ghosts? Well —I am getting toward the end, and a few inconsistencies may be forgiven to one who is not far from discoveries that will certainly be inconsistent with much that we have learned by heart in this interesting world. Perhaps it will be pardoned me as a last flicker of moribund pride if I say that in my younger days I was a crack shot, and to the best of my belief never refused a bet or a drink or an adventure. I do not remember ever having been afraid of a human being; and yet I have known fear. There are weeks, still, when I live in a bath of it. I think I will amend my first statement, and say instead that I do not believe in any ghosts except my own—oh, and in Wender's and Lithway's, of course.

Some people still remember Lithway for the sake of his charm. He never achieved anything, so far as I know, except his own delightful personality. He was a classmate of mine, and we saw a great deal of each other both in and after college—until he married, indeed. His marriage coincided with my own appointment to a small diplomatic post in the East; and by the time that I had served my apprenticeship, come into my property, resigned from the service, and returned to America, Lithway's wife had suddenly and tragically died. I had never seen her but once—on her wedding day—but I had reason to believe that Lithway had every right to be as inconsolable as he was. If he had ever had any ambition in his own profession, which was law, he lost it all when he lost her. He retired to the suburban country, where he bought a new house that had just been put up. He was its first tenant, I remember. That fact, later, grew to seem important. There he relapsed into a semi-populated solitude, with a few visitors, a great many books, and an inordinate amount of tobacco. These details I gathered from Wender in town, while I was adjusting my affairs.

Never had an inheritance come so pat as mine. There were all sorts of places I wanted to go to, and now I had money enough to do it. The wanderlust had nearly eaten my heart out during the years when I had kicked my heels in that third-rate legation. I wanted to see Lithway, but a dozen minor catastrophes prevented us from meeting during those breathless weeks, and as soon as I could I positively had to be off. Youth is like that. So that, although Lithway's bereavement had been very recent, at the time when I was in America settling my affairs and drawing the first installment of my beautiful income— there is no beauty like that of unearned increment—I did not see him until he had been a widower for more than two years.

The first times I visited Lithway were near together. I had begun what was to be my almost lifelong holiday by spending two months alone—save for servants—on a house-boat in the Vale of Cashmere; and my next flights were very short. When I came back from those, I rested on level wing at Braythe. Lithway was a little bothered, on one of these occasions, about the will of a cousin who had died in Germany, leaving an orphan daughter, a child of six or seven. His conscience troubled him sometimes, and occasionally he said he ought to go over and see that the child's inheritance was properly administered. But there was an aunt—a mother's sister—to look after the child, and her letters indicated that there was plenty of money and a good lawyer to look after the investments. Since his wife's death, Lithway had sunk into lethargy. He had enough to live on, and he drew out of business entirely, putting everything he had into government bonds. When he hadn't energy enough left to cut off coupons, he said, he should know that it was time for him to commit suicide. He really spoke as if he thought that final indolence might arrive any day. I read the aunt's letters. She seemed to be a good sort, and the pages reeked of luxury and the maternal instinct. I rather thought it would be a good excuse to get Lithway out of his rut, and advised him to go; but, when he seemed so unwilling, I couldn't conscientiously say I thought the duty imperative. I had long ago exhausted Germany —I had no instinct to accompany him.

Lithway, then, was perfectly idle. His complete lack of the executive gift made him an incomparable host. He had been in the house three years, and I was visiting him there for perhaps the third time, when he told me that it was haunted. He didn't seem inclined to give details, and, above all, didn't seem inclined to be worried. He sat up very late always, and preferably alone, a fact that in itself proved that he was not nervous. As I said, I had never been interested in ghosts, and the newness of the house robbed fear of all seriousness. Ghosts batten on legend and decay. There wasn't any legend, and the house was almost shockingly clean. When he told me of the ghost, then, I forbore to ask for any more information than he, of his own volition, gave me. If he had wanted advice or assistance, he would, of course, have said so. The servants seemed utterly unaware of anything queer, and servants leave a haunted house as rats a sinking ship. It really did not seem worth inquiring into. I referred occasionally to Lithway's ghost as I might have done to a Syracusan coin which I should know him proud to possess but loath to show.

On my return from Yucatan, one early spring, Lithway welcomed me as usual. He seemed lazier than ever, and I noticed that he had moved his books down from a second-story to a ground-floor room. He slept outdoors summer and winter, and he had an outside stairway built to lead from his library up to the sleeping-porch. A door from the sleeping-porch led straight into his dressing-room. I laughed at his arrangements a little.

"You live on this side of the house entirely now—cut off, actually, from the other side. What is the matter with the east?"

He pointed out to me that the dining-room and the billiard-room were on the eastern side and that he never shunned them. "It's just a notion," he said. "Mrs. Jayne" (the housekeeper) "sleeps on the second floor, and I don't like to wake her when I go up at three in the morning. She is a light sleeper."

I laughed outright. "Lithway, you're getting to be an old maid."

It was natural that I should dispose my effects in the rooms least likely to be used by Lithway. I took over his discarded up-stairs study, and, with a bedroom next door, was very comfortable. He assured me that he had no reason to suppose I should ever be disturbed in either room. Moving his own things, he said, had been purely a precautionary measure in behalf of Mrs. Jayne. Curiously enough, I was perfectly sure that his first statement was absolutely true and his second absolutely false. Only the first one, however, seemed to be really my affair. I could hardly complain.

Lithway did seem changed; but I have such an involuntary trick of comparing my rediscovered friends with the human beings I have most recently been seeing that I did not take the change too seriously. He was perfectly unlike the Yucatan Indians; but, on reflection, why shouldn't he be, I asked myself. Probably he had always been just like that. I couldn't prove that he hadn't. Yet I did think there was something back of his listlessness other than mere prolonged grief for his wife. Occasionally, I confess, I thought about the ghost in this connection.

One morning I was leaving my sitting-room to go down to Lithway's library. The door of the room faced the staircase to the third story, and as I came out I could always see, directly opposite and above me, a line of white banisters that ran along the narrow third-story hall. Mechanically, this time, I looked up and saw—I need not say, to my surprise—a burly negro leaning over the rail looking down at me. The servants were all white, and the man had, besides, a very definite look of not belonging there. He didn't, in any way, fit into his background. I ran up the stairs to investigate. When I got just beneath him, he bent over towards me with a malicious gesture. All I saw, for an instant, was a naked brown arm holding up a curious jagged knife. The edge caught the little light there was in the dim hall as he struck at me. I hit back, but he had gone before I reached him—simply ceased to be. There was no Cheshire-cat vanishing process. I was staring again into the dim hall, over the white banisters. There were no rooms on that side of the hall, and consequently no doors.

A light broke in on me. I went down-stairs to Lithway. "I've seen your ghost," I said bluntly.

What seemed to be a great relief relaxed his features. "You have! And isn't she extraordinary?"

"She?"

"You say you've seen her," he went on hurriedly. "Her? Him, man—black as Tartarus. And he cut me over the head."

"There?" Lithway drew his finger down the place. "Yes. How did you know? I don't feel it now." "Look at yourself."

He handed me a mirror. The slash was indicated clearly by a white line, but there was no abrasion.

"That is very interesting," I managed to say; but I really did not half like it.

Lithway looked at me incredulously. "She has never had a weapon before," he murmured. "She? This was a man."

"Oh, no!" he contradicted. "That's impossible."

"He was a hairy brute and full-bearded besides," I calmly insisted.

Lithway jumped up. "My God! there's some one in the house." He caught up a revolver. "Let us go and look. He'll have made off with the silver."

"Look here, Lithway," I protested. "I tell you this man wasn't real. He vanished into thin air—like any other ghost."

"But the ghost is a woman." He was as stupid as a child about it.

"Then there are two." I didn't really believe it, but it seemed clear that we could never settle the dispute. Each at least would have to pretend to believe the other for the sake of peace.

"Suppose you tell me about your ghost," I suggested soothingly. But Lithway was dogged, and we had to spend an hour exploring the house and counting up Lithway's valuables. Needless to say, there was no sign of invasion anywhere. At the end of the hour I repeated my demand. The scar was beginning to fade, I noted in the mirror, though still clearly visible.

"Suppose you tell me about your ghost. You never have, you know."

"I've only seen her a few times."

"Where?"

"Leaning over the banisters in the third-floor hall." "What is she like?"

"A slip of a girl. Rather fair and drooping, but a strange look in her eyes. Dressed in white, with a blue sash. That's all." "Does she speak?"

"No; but she waves a folded paper at me." "What time of day have you seen her?" "About eleven in the morning." The clocks were then striking twelve.

"Well," I ventured, "that's clearly the ghost's hour. But the two of them couldn't be more different."

He made me describe the savage again. The extraordinary part of it was that, in spite of his baffling blackness, I could do so perfectly. He was as individual to me as a white man—more than that, as a friend. He had personality, that ghost.

"What race should you say he was?"

I thought. "Some race I don't know; Zulu, perhaps. A well-built beggar."

"And you're perfectly sure he was real—I mean, wasn't human?"

The distinction made me smile, though the question irritated me. "You can see that if his object was murder he made a poor job. You found all your silver, didn't you?" Then I played my trump-card. "And do you suppose that a burglar would wander round this countryside in a nose-ring and a loin-cloth? Nice disguise!"

Lithway looked disturbed. "But the other one," he murmured. "I don't understand the other."

"She seems much easier to understand than mine," I protested.

"Oh, I don't mean her.'" he said. "I mean it."

For the first time I began to be afraid that Lithway had left the straight track of common sense. It was silly enough to have two ghosts in a new house—but three!

"It?" I asked.

"The one Wender saw."

"Oh! Wender has seen one?"

"Six months ago. I've never been able to get him here since. It was rather nasty, and Wender—well, Wender's sensitive. And he's a little dotty on the occult, in any case."

"Did he see it at eleven in the morning?"

Lithway seemed irritated. "Of course!" he snapped out. He spoke as if the idiosyncrasy of his damned house had a dignity that he was bound to defend.

"And what was it?"

"A big rattlesnake, coiled to strike."

Even then I could not take it seriously. "That's not a ghost; it's a symptom."

"It did strike," Lithway went on. "Did he have a scar?"

"No. He couldn't even swear that it quite touched him."

"Then why did it worry him?"

Lithway hesitated. "I suppose the uncertainty---- "

"Uncertainty! If there's anything less dreadful than an imaginary snake that has struck, it is an imaginary snake that hasn't struck. What has got into Wender?"

"Fear, apparently," said Lithway shortly. "He won't come back. Says a real rattlesnake probably wouldn't get into a house in Braythe more than once, but an unreal rattlesnake might get in any day. I don't blame him."

"May I ask," I said blandly, "if you are so far gone that you think rattlesnakes have ghosts?"

Lithway lost his temper. "If you want to jeer at the thing, for God's sake have the manners not to do it in this house! I tell you we have all three seen ghosts."

"The ghost of a rattlesnake," I murmured to myself. "It beats everything!" And I looked once more into the mirror. The scar that the knife had made was still perceptible, but very faint. "Did you hunt the house over for the snake?"

"Of course we did."

"Did you find it?"

"Of course we didn't—any more than we found your Zulu."

"Then why did you insist so on hunting the Zulu?"

Lithway colored a little. "Well, to tell the truth, I never wholly believed in that snake. If you or Wender had only seen her, now!"

"I don't see why Wender was so worried," I said. "After all, a snake might have got in—and got out."

"He saw it twice," explained Lithway.

"Symptoms," I murmured. "Had he ever had an adventure with a rattlesnake?" "No."

"Then why should it make him nervous?"

"I suppose"—Lithway looked at me a little cautiously, I thought —"just because he never had seen one. He said, I remember, that the rattlesnake hadn't been born yet."

I laughed. "Wender is sensitive. The ghost of a rattlesnake that has never lived—well, you can't be more fantastic than that!"

"Wender has a theory," Lithway said.

But he seemed actually to want to change the subject. Accordingly, I did change it—a little. I didn't really care for Wender's theories. I had heard some of them. They included elementáis.

"Tell me some more about yours. She's the most convincing of the three. Do you recognize her?"

"Never saw any one that looked remotely like her."

"And you are the first occupant of this house," I mused. "Was she dressed in an old-fashioned way?"

Lithway actually blushed. "She is dressed rather oddly—her hair is done queerly. I've hunted the fashion-books through, and I can't find such a fashion anywhere in the last century. I'm not in the least afraid, but I am curious about her, I admit."

"Was Wender's rattlesnake old-fashioned?"

Lithway got up. "See here," he said, "I'm not going to stand jollying. That's the one thing i am afraid of. Should you like to hear Wender's theory?"

"Not I," I said firmly. "He believes in two kinds of magic—white and black—and has eaten the fruit of the mango-tree that a fakir has just induced to grow out of the seed before his eyes. He told me once that devils were square. I'm not in the least interested in Wender's rattlesnake. The wonder is, with his peculiar twist of mind, that he doesn't insist on living in this house."

"He particularly hates snakes," answered Lithway. "He was hoping to see her, but he never could. Nor you, apparently."

"How often do you see her?" "About once in six months." "And you're not afraid?"

"Well—she doesn't do anything to me, you know." He was very serious.

"Probably couldn't hurt you if she did—a young thing like that. But why don't you move out?"

Lithway frankly crimsoned. "I—like her." "In spite of her eyes?"

"In spite of her eyes. And—I've thought that look in them might be the cross light on the staircase."

I burst out laughing. "Lithway, come away with me. Solitude is getting on your nerves. We'll go to Germany and look after your little cousin and the aunt who writes such wonderful letters."

"No." Lithway was firm. "It's too much like work."

I was serious, for he really seemed to me, at the time of this visit, in rather a bad way. I urged him with every argument I could think of. He had no counter-arguments, but finally he broke out: "Well, if you will have it, I feel safer here."

"You've never seen her anywhere else, have you?"

"No."

"Then this seems to be the one point of danger."
"Wender's theory is that----- " he began.

But I persisted in not hearing Wender's theory. Even when, a week later, my own experience was exactly duplicated and I had spent another day in watching a white line fade off my forehead, I still persisted. But, as Lithway wouldn't leave the house, I did. I began even to have a sneaking sympathy for Wender. But I didn't want to hear his theory. Indeed, to this day I never have heard it. Oddly enough, though, I should be willing to wager a good sum that it was accurate. ,

I was arranging for a considerable flight—something faddier and more dangerous than I had hitherto attempted—and to a friend as indolent as Lithway I could only prepare to bid a long farewell. He positively refused to accompany me even on the earlier and less difficult stages of my journey. "I'll stick to my home," he declared. It was a queer home to want to stick to, I thought privately, especially as the ghost was obviously local. He had never seen an apparition except at Braythe—nor had I, nor had Wender. I worried about leaving him there, for the one danger I apprehended was the danger of overwrought nerves; but Lithway refused to budge, and you can't coerce a sane and able-bodied man with a private fortune. I did carry my own precautions to the point of looking up the history of the house. The man from whom Lithway had bought it, while it was still unfinished, had intended it for his own occupancy; but a lucrative post in a foreign country had determined him to leave America. The very architect was a churchwarden, the husband of one wife and the father of eight children. I even hunted up the contractor: not one accident had occurred while the house was building, and he had employed throughout, most amicably, union labor on its own terms. It was silly of me, if you like, but I had really been shaken by the unpleasant powers of the place. After my researches it seemed clear that in objecting to it any further I shouldn't have a leg to stand on. In any case, Lithway would probably rather live in a chamel-house than move. I had to wash my hands of it all.

The last weeks of my visit were perfectly uneventful, both for Lithway and me—as if the house, too, were on its guard. I came to believe that there was nothing in it, and if either of us had been given to drinking, I should have called the eleven-o'clock visitation a new form of hang-over. I was a little inclined, in defiance of medical authorities, to consider it an original and interesting form of indigestion. By degrees I imposed upon myself to that extent. I did not impose on myself, however, to the extent of wanting to hear Wender talk about it; and I still blush to think how shallow were the excuses that I mustered for not meeting him at any of the times that he proposed.

This is a bad narrative, for the reason that it must be so fragmentary. It is riddled with lapses of time. Ghosts may get in their fine work in an hour, but they have always been preparing their coup for years. Every ghost, compared with us, is Methuselah. We have to fight in a vulnerable and dissolving body; but they aren't pressed for time. They've only to lie low until the psychological moment. Oh, I'd undertake to accomplish almost anything if you'd give me the ghost's chance. If he can't get what he wants out of this generation, he can get it out of the next. Grand thing, to be a ghost!

It was some years before I went back to Braythe. Wender, I happen to know, never went back. Lithway used to write me now and then, but seldom referred to my adventure. He couldn't very well, since the chief burden of his letters was always "When are you coming to visit me?" Once, when I had pressed him to join me for a season in Japan, he virtually consented, but at the last moment I got a telegram, saying: "I can't leave her. Bon voyage/" That didn't make me want to go back to Braythe. I was worried about him, but his persistent refusal to act on any one's advice made it impossible to do anything for him. I thought once of hiring some one to bum the house down; but Lithway wouldn't leave it, and I didn't want to do anything clumsy that would imperil him. I was much too far away to arrange it neatly. I suggested it once to Wender, when we happened to meet in London, and he was exceedingly taken with the idea. I half hoped, for a moment, that he would do it himself. But the next afternoon he came back with a lot of reasons why it wouldn't do—he had been grubbing in the British Museum all day. I very nearly heard Wender's theory that time, but I pleaded a dinner engagement and got off.

You can imagine that I was delighted when I heard from Lithway, some years after my own encounter with the savage on the staircase, that he had decided to pull out and go to Europe. He had the most fantastic reasons for doing it—this time he wrote me fully. It seems he had become convinced that his apparition was displeased with him—didn't like the look in her eyes, found it critical. As he wasn't doing anything in particular except live like a hermit at Braythe, the only thing he could think of to propitiate her was to leave. Perhaps there was a sort of withered coquetry in it, too; he may have thought the lady would miss him if he departed and shut up the house. You see, by this time she was about the most real thing in his life. I don't defend Lithway; but I thought then that, whatever the impelling motive, it would be an excellent thing for him to leave Braythe for a time. Perhaps, once free of it, he would develop a normal and effectual repugnance to going back, and then we should all have our dear, delightful Lithway again. I wrote triumphantly to Wender, and he replied hopefully, but on a more subdued note.

Lithway came over to Europe. He wrote to me, making tentative suggestions that I should join him; but, as he refused to join me and I didn't care at all about the sort of thing he was planning, we didn't meet. I was all for the Peloponnesus, and he was for a wretched tourist's itinerary that I couldn't stomach. I hoped to get him in the end to wander about in more interesting places, but as he had announced that he was going first to Berlin to look up the little cousin and her maternal aunt, I thought I would wait until he had satisfied his clannish conscience. Then, one fine day, his old curiosity would awaken, and we should perhaps start out together to get new impressions. That fine day never dawned, however. He lingered on in Germany, following his relatives to Marienbad when they left Berlin for the summer. I hoped, with each mail, that he would announce his arrival in some spot where I could conceivably meet him; but the particular letter announcing that never came. He was quite taken up with the cousins. He said nothing about going home, and I was thoroughly glad of that, at least.

I was not wholly glad, just at the moment, when a letter bounced out at me one morning, announcing that he was to marry the little cousin—by this time, as I had understood from earlier correspondence, a lovely girl of eighteen. I had looked forward to much companionship with the Lithway I had known of old, when he should be free of his obsession. I had thought him on the way to freedom; and here he was, caught by a flesh-and-blood damsel who thrust me out quite as decisively as the phantasmal lady on the staircase. I had decency enough to be glad for Lithway, if not for myself; glad that he could strike the old idyllic note and live again delightfully in the moment. I didn't go to Berlin to see them married, but I sent them my blessing and a very curious and beautiful eighteenth-century clock. I also promised to visit them in America. I felt that, if necessary, I could face Braythe, now that the ghost was so sure to be laid. No woman would stay in a house where her husband was carrying on, however unwillingly, an affair with an apparition; and, as their address remained the same, I believed that the ghost had given up the fight.

This story has almost the gait of history. I have to sum up decades in a phrase. It is really the span of one man's whole life that I am covering, you see. But have patience with me while I skim the intervening voids, and hover meticulously over the vivid patches of detail. ... It was some two years before I reached Braythe. I don't remember particularly what went on during those two years; I only know that I was a happy wanderer. I was always a happy wanderer, it seems to me as I look back on life, except for the times when I sank by Lithway's side into his lethargy—a lucid lethargy, in which unaccountable things happened very quietly, with an utter stillness of context. I do know that I was planning a hunting-trip in British Central Africa, and wrote Lithway that I had better postpone my visit until that was over. He seemed so hurt to think that I could prefer any place to him that I did put it off until the next year and made a point of going to the Lithways'.

I had no forebodings when I got out of Lithway's car at his gate and faced the second Mrs. Lithway, who had framed her beauty in the clustering wisteria of the porch. I was immensely glad for Lithway that he had a creature like that to companion him. Youth and beauty are wonderful things to keep by one's fireside. There was more than a touch of vicarious gratitude in my open admiration of Mrs. Lithway. He was a person one couldn't help wanting good things for; and one felt it a delicate personal attention to oneself when they came to him.

Nothing changes a man, however, after he has once achieved his type: that was what I felt most keenly, at the end of the evening, as I sat with Lithway in his library. Mrs. Lithway had trailed her light skirts up the staircase with, incomparable grace, smiling back at us over her shoulder; and I had gone with Lithway to the library, wondering how long I could hold him with talk of anything but her. I soon saw that he didn't wish to talk of her. That, after all, was comprehensible—you could take it in so many ways; but it was with real surprise that I saw him sink almost immediately into gloom. Gloom had never been a gift of Lithway's; his indolence had always been shot through with mirth. Even his absorption in the ghost had been whimsical—almost as if he had deliberately let himself go, had chosen to be obsessed. I didn't know what to make of the gloom, the unresilient heaviness with which he met my congratulations and my sallies. They had been perfect together at dinner and through the early evening. Now he fell slack in every muscle and feature, as if the preceding hours had been a diabolic strain. I wondered a little if he could be worried about money. I supposed Lithway had enough —and his bride too, if it came to that—though I didn't know how much. But one could not be long in the house without noticing luxuries that had nothing to do with its original unpretending comfort. You were met at every turn by some aesthetic refinement as costly as the lace and jewels in which Mrs. Lithway's own loveliness was wrapped. It was evident from all her talk that her standard of civilization was very high; that she had a natural attachment to shining non-essentials. I was at a loss; I didn't know what to say to him, he looked so tired. Such silence, even between Lithway and me, was awkward.

Finally he spoke: "Do you remember my ghost?"

"I remember your deafening me with talk of her. I never saw her."

"No, of course you wouldn't have seen her."

"I saw one of my own, you remember."

"Oh, yes! A black man who struck at you. You never have had a black man strike at you in real life, have you?" He turned to me with a faint flicker of interest.

"Never. We threshed all that out before, you know. I never even saw that particular nigger except at Braythe."

"You will see him, perhaps, if you are fool enough to go to British Central Africa," he jerked out.

"Perhaps," I answered. But I was more interested in Lithway's adventure. "Do you see your ghost now?" I had been itching to ask, and it seemed to me that he had given me a fair opening.

Lithway passed his hand across his brows. "I don't know. I'm not quite sure. Sometimes I think so. But I couldn't swear to it."

"Has she grown dimmer, then—more hazy? You used to speak of her as if she were a real woman coming to a tryst: flesh and blood, at the least."

He looked at me a little oddly. "I'm not awfully well. My eyes play me tricks sometimes. . . . When you got off the train to-night, I could have sworn you had a white scar on your forehead. As soon as we got out here and I had a good look at you, I saw you hadn't, of course." Then he went back. "I don't believe I really do see her now. I think it may be an hallucination when occasionally I think I do. Yes, I'm pretty sure that, when I think I do, it's pure hallucination. I don't like it; I wish she'd either go or stay."

"My dear fellow, you speak as if she had ever, in her palmiest days, been anything but an hallucination. Did you get to the point of believing that the girl you say used to hang over the staircase was real?" 198

"She was more real than the one that sometimes I see there now. Oh, yes, she was real! What I see now—when I see it at all—is just the ghost of her."

"The ghost of a ghost!" I ejaculated. "It's as bad as Wender's rattlesnake."

Lithway turned to me suddenly. "Where is Wender?"

"Why, don't you know? Working on American archaeology at some university—I don't know which. He hadn't decided on the place, when he last wrote. I was going to get his address from you."

"He won't come here, you know. And Margaret's feelings are a little hurt—he has often been quite near. So there's a kind of official coolness. She doesn't know about the ghosts, and therefore I can't quite explain Wender's refusals to her. Of course, I know it's on that account; he's as superstitious as a woman. But poor Margaret, I suppose, believes he doesn't approve of my having taken a wife. She's as sweet as possible about it, but I can see she's hurt. And yet I'd rather she would be hurt than to know about the house."

"Why, in Heaven's name, don't you sell it and move, Lithway?" I cried.

He colored faintly. "Margaret is very fond of the place. I couldn't, considering its idiosyncrasy, sell with a good conscience, and if I didn't sell, it would mean losing a pretty penny—more, certainly, than Margaret and I can afford to. She lost most of her own money, you know, a few years ago."

"The aunt?"

"Oh, dear, no!" He said it rather hastily. "But you were quite right at the time. I ought to have gone out there ten years ago. Women never know how to manage money."

I looked him in the eyes. "Lithway, anything in the world is better than staying in this house. You're in a bad way. You admit, yourself, you're not well. And Mrs. Lithway would rather cut out the motor and live anywhere than have you go to pieces."

He laughed. "Tell Margaret that I'm going to pieces—if you dare!"

"I'm not afraid of you, even if I should."

"No; but wouldn't you be afraid of her?"

I thought of the utter youth of Mrs. Lithway; the little white teeth that showed so childishly when she laughed; her small white hands that had seemed so weighed down with a heavy piece of embroidery;

her tiny feet that slipped along the polished floors—a girl that you could pick up and throw out of the window. "Certainly not. Would you?"

"I should think so!" He smiled. "We've been very happy here. I don't think she would like to move. I shan't suggest it to her. And mind"—he turned to me rather sharply—"don't you hint to her that the house is the uncanny thing you and that fool Wender seem to think it is."

I saw that there was no going ahead on that tack. Beyond a certain point, you can't interfere with mature human beings. But certainly Lithway looked ill; and if he admitted ill health, there must be something in it. It was extraordinary that Mrs. Lithway saw nothing. I was almost sorry—in spite of the remembered radiance of the vision on the porch—that Lithway had chosen to fall in love with a young fool. I rose.

"Love must be blind, if your wife doesn't see you're pulled down."

"Oh, love—it's the blindest thing going, thank God!" He was silent for a moment. "There are a great many things I can't explain," he said. "But you can be sure that everything's all right."

I was quite sure, though I couldn't wholly have told why, that everything was at least moderately wrong. But I decided to say nothing more that night. I went to bed.

Lithway was ill; only so could I account for his nervousness, which sometimes, in the next days, mounted to irritability. He was never irritable with his wife; when the tenser moods were on, he simply ceased to address her, and turned his attention to me. We motored a good deal; that seemed to agree with him. But one morning he failed to appear at breakfast, and Mrs. Lithway seemed surprised that I had heard nothing during the night. He had had an attack of acute pain—the doctor had been sent for. There had been telephoning, running to and fro, and talk in the corridors that no one had thought of keying down on my account. I was a little ashamed of not having awaked, and more than a little cross at not having been called. She assured me that i could have done nothing, and apologized as prettily as possible for having to leave me to myself during the day. Lithway was suffering less, but, of course, she would be at his bedside. Naturally, I made no objections to her wifely solicitude. I was allowed to see Lithway for a few minutes; but the pain was severe, and I cut my conversation short. The doctor suspected the necessity for an operation, and they sent to New York for a consulting specialist. I determined to wait until they should have reached their gruesome decision, on the off chance that I might, in the event of his being moved, be of service to Mrs. Lithway. In spite of her calm and sweetness, and the perfect working of the household mechanism—no flurry, no fright, no delays or hitches—I thought her, still, a young fool. Any woman, of any age, was a fool if she had not seen Lithway withering under her very eyes.

It was a dreary day during which we waited for the New York physician; one of those days when sunlight seems drearier than mist —a monotonous and hostile glare. I tried reading Lithway's books, but the mere fact that they were his got on my nerves. I decided to go to my room and throw myself on the resources of my own luggage. There would be something there to read, I knew. I closed the library door quietly and went up-stairs. Outside my own door I stopped and looked—involuntarily, with no conscious curiosity—up to the third-story hall. There, in the dim corridor, leaning over the balustrade in a thin shaft of sunlight that struck up from the big window on the landing, stood Mrs. Lithway, with a folded paper in her hand, looking down at me. I did not wish to raise my voice—Lithway, I thought, might be sleeping—so did not speak to her. I don't think, in any case, I should have wanted to speak to her. The look in her eyes was distinctly unpleasant—the kind of look people don't usually face you with. I remember wondering, as our surprised glances met, why the deuce she should hate, me like that—how the deuce a nice young thing could hate any one like that. It must be personal to me, I thought—no nice young thing would envisage the world at large with such venom. I turned away; and as I turned, I saw her, out of the tail of my eye, walk, with her peculiar lightness of step, along the upper corridor to the trunk-loft. She had the air of being caught, of not having wished to be seen. I opened my bedroom door immediately, but as I opened it I heard a sound behind me. Margaret Lithway stood on the threshold of her husband's room, with an empty bottle.

"Would you mind taking the car into the village and getting this filled again?" she asked. Her eyes had dark shadows beneath them; she had evidently not slept, the night before.

I flatter myself that I did not betray to her in any way my perturbation. Indeed, the event had fallen on a mind so ripe for solutions that, in the very instant of my facing her, I realized that what I had just seen above-stairs (and seen by mistake, I can assure you; she had fled from me) was Lithway's old ghost—no less. I took the bottle, read the label, and assured Mrs. Lithway that I would go at once. Mrs. Lithway was wrapped in a darkish house-gown of some sort. The lady in the upper hall had been in white, with a blue sash. ... I was very glad when I saw Mrs. Lithway go into her husband's room and shut the door. I was having hard work to keep my expression where it belonged. For five minutes I stood in the hall; five minutes of unbroken stillness. Then I went to the garage, ordered out the car, and ran into the village, where I presented the bottle to the apothecary. He filled it immediately. As I re-entered the house, the great hall clock struck; it was half-past eleven. I sent the stuff—lime-water, I believe—up to Mrs. Lithway by a servant, went into my room, and locked the door.

I cannot say that I solved the whole enigma of Braythe in the hour before luncheon; but I faced for the first time the seriousness of a situation that had always seemed to me, save for Lithway's curious reactions upon it, more than half fantastic, if not imaginary. I had seen, actually seen, Lithway's ghost. I had not been meant to see her; and I was inclined to regret the sudden impulse that had led me to leave Lithway's library and go to my own room. The identity of the "ghost" with Mrs. Lithway was appalling to me—the more so, that there could have been no mistake about the nature of the personality that had reluctantly presented itself to my vision. I found myself saying: "Could that look in her eyes be the cross light on the stairs?" and then suddenly remembered that I was only echoing the Lithway of years ago. It was incredible that any man should have liked the creature I had seen; and I could account for Lithway's long and sentimental relation with the apparition only by supposing that he had never seen her, as I had, quite off her guard. But if, according to his hint of the night before, he had come to confound the ghost with the real woman—what sort of marriage was that? I asked myself. The ghost was a bad lot, straight through. It brought me into the realm of pure horror. The event explained—oh, I raised my hands to wave away the throng of things it explained! Indeed, until I could talk once more with Lithway, I didn't want to face them; I didn't want

From Many Inventions, copyright 1893, by Rudyard Kipling; re« printed by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc., Macmillaq & Co. Ltd., and Mrs. George Bambridge.

"The Finest Story in the World"

By RUDYARD KIPLING

"Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave."

—W. E. Henley

His name was charlie mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations. I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his given name, and he called the marker "Bullseyes." Charlie explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother.

That was our first step toward better acquaintance. He would call on me sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London with his fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must, he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. He desired to make himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not above sending stories of love and death to the drop-a-penny-in-the-slot journals. It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of many hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden. Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honorable, but, at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way about the world as befitted a bank clerk on twenty-five shillings a week. He rhymed "dove" with "love" and "moon" with "June," and devoutly believed that they had never so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays he filled up with hasty words of apology and description and swept on, seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause.

I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and I know that his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand. This he told me almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he was ravaging my bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to speak the truth as to his chances of "writing something really great, you know." Maybe I encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes flaming with excitement, and said breathlessly:

"Do you mind—can you let me stay here and write all this evening? I won't interrupt you, I won't really. There's no place for me to write in at my mother's."

"What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was.

"I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!"

There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth.

"It looks such awful rot now," he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?"

I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: "Perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing."

"Yes I do—except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!"

"Read me what you've done," I said.

He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be.

"It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously.

"I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing it."

"Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week."

"I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?"

"How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies in your head."

Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked at him, wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way. It was distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled on serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end. It would be folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands, when I could do so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much!

"What do you think?" he said, at last. "I fancy I shall call it 'The Story of a Ship.' "

"I think the idea's pretty good; but you won't be able to handle it
for ever so long. Now I"----

"Would it be of any use to you? Would you care to take it? I should be proud," said Charlie, promptly.

There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hotheaded, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths. And Charlie did all these things. Still it was necessary to salve my conscience before I possessed myself of Charlie's thoughts.

"Let's make a bargain. I'll give you a fiver for the notion," I said. Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.

"Oh, that's impossible. Between two pals, you know, if i may call you so, and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the notion if it's any use to you. I've heaps more."

He had—none knew this better than I—but they were the notions of other men.

"Look at it as a matter of business—between men of the world," I
returned. "Five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books.
Business is business, and you may be sure I shouldn't give that price
unless"-----

"Oh, if you put it that way," said Charlie, visibly moved by the thought of the books. Tire bargain was clinched with an agreement that he should at unstated intervals come to me with all the notions that he possessed, should have a table of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to inflict upon me all his poems and fragments of poems. Then I said, "Now tell me how you came by this idea."

"It came by itself." Charlie's eyes opened a little.

"Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have read before somewhere."

"I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day. There's nothing wrong about the hero, is there?"

"Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero went pirating. How did he live?"

"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you about."

"What sort of ship?"

"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the oar-holes and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then there's a bench running down between the two lines of oars and an overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the men work."

"How do you know that?"

"It's in the tale. There's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He's chained to his oar of course—the hero."

"How is he chained?"

"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He's on the lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from the hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can't you imagine the sunlight just squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling about as the ship moves?"

"I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it."

"How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember it's quite dark on the lowest deck and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar on that deck he isn't thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces."

"Why?" I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of command in which it was flung out.

"To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and try to pull up the benches by all standing up together in their chains."

"You've a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about galleys and galley-slaves?"

"Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But, perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something."

He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, delighted with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy the notions of other men, that these might teach him how to write. I had the consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of purchase, and I thought that I could make something of it.

When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. Most of all was he drunk with Longfellow.

"Isn't it splendid? Isn't it superb?" he cried, after hasty greetings. "Listen to this—

" 'Wouldst thou,'—so the helmsman answered, 'Know the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery.'

By gum!

" 'Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery,'"

he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting me. "But I can understand it too," he said to himself. "I don't know how to thank you for that fiver. And this; listen—

" 'I remember the black wharves and the ships And the sea-tides tossing free, And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea.'

I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it."

"You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it?"

"When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it,

" 'When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the Equinox.' "

He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was shaking himself.

"When that storm comes," he continued, "I think that all the oars in the ship that I was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their chests smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By the way, have you done anything with that notion of mine yet?"

"No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the world you're so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know nothing of ships."

"I don't know. It's as real as anything to me until I try to write it 254 down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had loaned me 'Treasure Island'; and I made up a whole lot of new things to go into the story." "What sort of things?"

"About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a skin bag, passed from bench to bench." "Was the ship built so long ago as that?"

"As what? I don't know whether it was long ago or not. It's only a notion, but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I bother you with talking about it?"

"Not in the least. Did you make up anything else?"

"Yes, but it's nonsense." Charlie flushed a little.

"Never mind; let's hear about it."

"Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be supposed to scratch on their oars wi*h the edges of their handcuffs. It seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It is so real to me, y'know."

"Have you the paper on you?"

"Ye-es, but what's the use of showing it? It's only a lot of scratches. All the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front page."

"I'll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote."

He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.

"What is it supposed to mean in English?" I said.

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it means 'I'm beastly tired.' It's great nonsense," he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real as people to me. Do do something to the notion soon; I should like to see it written and printed."

"But all you've told me would make a long book."

"Make it then. You've only to sit down and write it out."

"Give me a little time. Have you any more notions?"

"Not just now. I'm reading all the books I've bought. They're splendid."

When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the inscription upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to make certain that it was not coming off or turning round.

Then . . . but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private in a corridor of the British Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possible, was "the Greek antiquity man." The policeman knew nothing except the rules of the Museum, and it became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices inside the gates. An elderly gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my search by holding the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully.

"What does this mean? H'mm," said he. "So far as I can ascertain it is an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part"—here he glared at me with intention—"of an extremely illiterate—ah—person." He read slowly from the paper, "Pollock, Erckmann, Tauchnitz, Henniker"—four names familiar to me.

"Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean—the gist of the thing?" I asked.

"I have been—many times—overcome with weariness in this particular employment. That is the meaning." He returned me the paper, and I fled without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.

I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time began. Above all, he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not include Greek. He would supply me—here I capered among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in their battered faces—with material to make my tale sure—so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped fiction. And I—I alone would know tjiat it was absolutely and literally true. I,—I alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing. Therefore I danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me and took steps in my direction.

It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there was no difficulty. But I had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph —drunk on Byron, Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past lives, and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I could not hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both into respect for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as new as it was to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to breaking point by reciting poetry— not his own now, but that of others. I wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of mankind. I blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn Charlie from the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to imitate them; but I choked down my impatience until the first flood of enthusiasm should have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.

"What's the use of my telling you what I think, when these chaps wrote things for the angels to read?" he growled, one evening. "Why don't you write something like theirs?"

"I don't think you're treating me quite fairly," I said, speaking under strong restraint.

"I've given you the story," he said, shortly, replunging into "Lara."

"But I want the details."

"The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a galley? They're quite easy. You can just make 'em up yourself. Turn up the gas a little, I want to go on reading."

I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing stupidity. I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what Charlie did not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind me I could only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in good temper. One minute's want of guard might spoil a priceless revelation: now and again he would toss his books aside—he kept them in my rooms, for his mother would have been shocked at the waste of good money had she seen them—and launched into his sea dreams. Again I cursed all the poets of England. The plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid, colored and distorted by that which he had read, and the result as delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the muttered song through a City telephone in the busiest part of the day.

He talked of the galley—his own galley had he but known it—with illustrations borrowed from the "Bride of Abydos." He pointed the experiences of his hero with quotations from "The Corsair," and threw in deep and desperate moral reflections from "Cain" and "Manfred," expecting me to use them all. Only when the talk turned on Longfellow were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was speaking the truth as he remembered it.

"What do you think of this?" I said one evening, as soon as I understood the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could expostulate, read him the whole of "The Saga of King Olaf!"

He listened open-mouthed, flushed, his hands drumming on the back of the sofa where he lay, till I came to the Song of Einar Tam-berskelver and the verse:

"Einar then, the arrow taking From the loosened string, Answered: 'That was Norway breaking 'Neath thy hand, O King.' "

He gasped with pure delight of sound.

"That's better than Byron, a little," I ventured. "Better? Why it's true/ How could he have known?" I went back and repeated:

'What was that?' said Olaf, standing

On the quarter-deck. 'Something heard I like the stranding

Of a shattered wreck.' "

"How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and go z-zzp all along the line? Why only the other night . . . But go back please and read 'The Skerry of Shrieks' again."

"No, I'm tired. Let's talk. What happened the other night?"

"I had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. The water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where I always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly at first, under a fine English fear of being laughed at.

"No. That's news to me," I answered, meekly, my heart beginning to beat.

"On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper 258 deck. There were four of us at that oar, all chained. I remember watching the water and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. Then we closed up on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over our bulwarks, and my bench broke and I was pinned down with the three other fellows on top of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs."

"Well?" Charlie's eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the wall behind my chair.

"I don't know how we fought. The men were trampling all over my back, and I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side—tied to their oars, you know—began to yell and back water. I could hear the water sizzle, and we spun round like a cockchafer and I knew, lying where I was, that there was a galley coming up bow-on, to ram us on the left side. I could just lift up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We wanted to meet her bow to bow, but it was too late. We could only turn a little bit because the galley on our right had hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving. Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left oars began to break as the other galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into them. Then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck planking, butt first, and one of them jumped clean up into the air and came down again close to my head."

"How was that managed?"

"The moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their own oar-holes, and I could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below. Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck—arrows, and hot pitch or something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke."

"One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it look like?" I had my reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance had once gone down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the water-level pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck.

"It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay there for years," said Charlie.

Exactly! The other man had said: "It looked like a silver wire laid down along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break." He had paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of knowledge, and I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk on twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a London omnibus, knew it all. It was no consolation to me that once in his lives he had been forced to die for his gains. I also must have died scores of times, but behind me, because I could have used my knowledge, the doors were shut.

"And then?" I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.

"The funny thing was, though, in all the mess I didn't feel a bit astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I'd been in a good many fights, because I told my next man so when the row began. But that cad of an overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains and give us a chance. He always said that we'd all be set free after a battle, but we never were; we never were." Charlie shook his head mournfully.

"What a scoundrel!"

"I should say he was. He never gave us enough to eat, and sometimes we were so thirsty that we used to drink salt-water. I can taste that salt-water still."

"Now tell me something about the harbor where the fight was fought."

"I didn't dream about that. I know it was a harbor, though; because we were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone under water was covered with wood to prevent our ram getting chipped when the tide made us rock."

"That's curious. Our hero commanded the galley, didn't he?"

"Didn't he just! He stood by the bows and shouted like a good 'un. He was the man who killed the overseer."

"But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren't you?"

"I can't make that fit quite," he said, with a puzzled look. "Tire galley must have gone down with all hands, and yet I fancy that the hero went on living afterward. Perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn't see that, of course. I was dead, you know."

He shivered slightly and protested that he could remember no more.

I did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in 260 ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately introduced him to Mortimer Collins's "Transmigration," and gave him a sketch of the plot before he opened the pages.

"What rot it all is!" he said, frankly, at the end of an hour. "I don't understand his nonsense about the Red Planet Mars and the King, and the rest of it. Chuck me the Longfellow again."

I handed him the book and wrote out as much as I could remember of his description of the sea-fight, appealing to him from time to time for confirmation of fact or detail. He would answer without raising his eyes from the book, as assuredly as though all his knowledge lay before him on the printed page. I spoke under the normal key of my voice that the current might not be broken, and I know that he was not aware of what he was saying, for his thoughts were out on the sea with Longfellow.

"Charlie," I asked, "when the rowers on the galleys mutinied how did they kill their overseers?"

"Tore up the benches and brained 'em. That happened when a heavy sea was running. An overseer on the lower deck slipped from the centre plank and fell among the rowers. They choked him to death against the side of the ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the other overseer to see what had happened. When he asked, he was pulled down too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by deck, with the pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. How they howled!"

"And what happened after that?"

"I don't know. The hero went away—red hair and red beard and all. That was after he had captured our galley, I think."

The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his left hand as a man does when interruption jars.

"You never told me he was red-headed before, or that he captured your galley," I said, after a discreet interval.

Charlie did not raise his eyes.

"He was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from
the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers—not
slaves, but free men. Afterward—years and years afterward—news
came from another ship, or else he came back"

His lips moved in silence. He was rapturously retasting some poem before him.

"Where had he been, then?" I was almost whispering that the sentence might come gentle to whichever section of Charlie's brain was working on my behalf.

"To the Beaches—the Long and Wonderful Beaches!" was the reply, after a minute of silence.

"To Furdurstrandi?" I asked, tingling from head to foot.

"Yes, to Furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion.
"And I too saw"--------- The voice failed.

"Do you know what you have said?" I shouted, incautiously.

He lifted his eyes, fully roused now. "No!" he snapped. "I wish you'd let a chap go on reading. Hark to this:

" 'But Othere, the old sea captain, He neither paused nor stirred

Till the king listened, and then

Once more took up his pen And wrote down every word.

" 'And to the King of the Saxons In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand and said, "Behold this walrus tooth." '

By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the shop never knowing where they'd fetch the land! Hah!"

"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two I'll make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere."

"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things any more. I want to read." He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging over my own ill-luck, I left him.

Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a child—an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones—on whose favor depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one half my torment. Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue in books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of Thorfin Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth or tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into the past. Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the last person in the world to clear it up. I could only wait and watch, but I went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. There was nothing that was not possible if Charlie's detestable memory only held good.

I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been written before, might tell the story of the first discovery of America, myself the discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie's mercy, and so long as there was a three-and-six-penny Bohn volume within his reach Charlie would not tell. I dared not curse him openly; I hardly dared jog his memory, for I was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years ago, told through the mouth of a boy of to-day; and a boy of to-day is affected by every change of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even when he desires to speak the truth.

I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in Gracechurch Street with a billbook chained to his waist. Business took him over London Bridge and I accompanied him. He was very full of the importance of that book and magnified it. As we passed over the Thames we paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown marble. A barge drifted under the steamer's stem and a lonely cow in that barge bellowed. Charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to that of an unknown and— though he would not have believed this—a much shrewder man. He flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge and, laughing very loudly, said:

"When they heard our bulls bellow the Skrcelings ran away!"

I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared under the bows of the steamer before I answered.

"Charlie, what do you suppose are Skrcelings?"

"Never heard of 'em before. They sound like a new kind of seagull. What a chap you are for asking questions!" he replied. "I have to go to the cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for mc and we can lunch somewhere together? I've a notion for a poem."

"No, thanks. I'm off. You're sure you know nothing about Skroe-lings?"

"Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap." He nodded and disappeared in the crowd.

Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's galleys came to Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land called Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the Skroelings—and the Lord He knows who these may or may not have been—came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain, and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning of the world!

Tlien I walked round the situation.

Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and unapproachable until all men were as wise as myself. That would be something, but manlike I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that Charlie's memory should fail me when I needed it most. Great Powers above—I looked up at them through the fog smoke-did the Lords of Life and Death know what this meant to me? Nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind, that comes from One, and is shared by one alone. I would be content—remembering Clive, I stood astounded at my own moderation,—with the mere right to tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the light literature of the day. If Charlie were permitted full recollection for one hour—for sixty short minutes—of existences that had extended over a thousand years—I would forego all profit and honor from all that I should make of his speech. I would take no share in the commotion that would follow throughout the particular corner of the earth that calls itself "the world." The thing should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make other men believe that they had written it. They would hire bull-hided self-advertising Englishmen to bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had lifted the fear of death from all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe would patronize it discursively with Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible women would invent unclean variants of the men's belief for the elevation of their sisters. Churches and religions would war over it. Between the hailing and re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a hundred—two hundred—a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world, which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that I would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know, let me write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the truth, and I would burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. Five minutes after the last line was written I would destroy it all. But I must be allowed to write it with absolute certainty.

There was no answer. The flaming colors of an Aquarium poster caught my eye and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure Charlie into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and whether, if he were under his power, he would speak of his past lives. If he did, and if people believed him . . . but Charlie would be frightened and flustered, or made conceited by the interviews. In either case he would begin to lie, through fear or vanity. He was safest in my own hands.

"They are very funny fools, your English," said a voice at my elbow, and turning round I recognized a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali law student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to become civilized. The old man was a retired native official, and on an income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.

Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali dressed with scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves. But I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian Government paid for his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to Sachi Durpan, and intrigued with the wives of his schoolmates.

"That is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster. "I am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?"

I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said. "What is there in your mind? You do not talk."

"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God, haven't you?"

"Oah, yes, here.' But when I go home I must conciliate popular superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will anoint idols."

"And hang up tulsi and feast the purohit, and take you back into caste again and make a good khuttii of you again, you advanced social Freethinker. And you'll eat desi food, and like it all, from the smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you."

"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly. "Once a Hindu—always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they know."

"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale to you."

I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and then came up to my rooms where I finished the tale.

"Beshak," he said, philosophically. "Lekin darwaza band hai. (Without doubt, but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering of previous existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with us, but, to happen to an Englishman—a cow-fed Malechh —an outcast. By Jove, that is most peculiar!"

"Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let's think the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations."

"Does he know that?" said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as he sat on my table. He was speaking in English now.

"He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!"

"There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute for libel."

"Let's leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his being made to speak?"

"There is a chance. Oah, yess! But if he spoke it would mean that all this world would end now—instanto—fall down on your head. These things are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut."

"Not a ghost of a chance?"

"How can there be? You are a Christi-an, and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When I passed my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the cram-book on Wordsworth. Trailing clouds of glory, you know."

"This seems to be an exception to the rule."

"There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as others, but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of yours said so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all his lost lives, or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank another hour. He would be what you called sack because he was mad, and they would send him to an asylum for lunatics. You can see that, my friend."

"Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him. His name need never appear in the story."

"Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try."

"I am going to."

"For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course?" "No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be all."

"Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the Gods. It is a very pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that—I mean at that. Be quick; he will not last long."

"How do you mean?"

"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman."

"Hasn't he, though!" I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.

"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes; bus—hogya—all up! I know. There are millions of women here. Housemaids, for instance."

I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. And yet nothing was more probable.

Grish Chunder grinned.

"Yes—also pretty girls—cousins of his house, and perhaps not
of his house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will
cure all this nonsense, or else"---

"Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows."

"I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the trade and the financial speculations like the rest. It must be so. You can see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, I think."

There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see that he had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his pockets. Charlie's poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him to talk about the galley.

Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.

"I beg your pardon," Charlie said, uneasily; "I didn't know you had anyone with you."

"I am going," said Grish Chunder.

He drew me into the lobby as he departed.

"That is your man," he said, quickly. "i tell you he will never speak all you wish. That is rot—bosh. But he would be most good to make to see things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play"—I had never seen Grish Chunder so excited—"and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what do you think? I tell you that he could see anything that a man could see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will tell us very many things."

"He may be all you say, but I'm not going to trust him to your gods and devils."

"It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when he wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before."

"That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You'd better go, Grish Chunder."

He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my only chance of looking into the future.

This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me to that. But I recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and sympathized with it.

"What a big black brute that was!" said Charlie, when I returned to him. "Well, look here, I've just done a poem; did it instead of playing dominoes after lunch. May I read it?"

"Let me read it to myself."

"Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things sound as if the rhymes were all wrong."

"Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of 'em."

Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of his verses. He had been reading his books faithfully, but he was not pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with Charlie.

Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie parrying every objection and correction with:

"Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."

Charles was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's that?" I said.

"Oh that's not poetry at all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it a sort of blank verse instead."

Here is Charlie's "blank verse":

"We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.

Will you never let us go? We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when you were beaten back by the foe,

The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs, but we were below,

We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were idle for we still swung to and fro.

Will you never let us go?

The salt made the oar handles like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row. Will you never let us go?

But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho!

Will you never Jet us go?" "H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?"

"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story and give me some of the profits?"

"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in your notions."

"I only want to give you the general notion of it—the knocking about from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something."

"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through some few adventures before he married."

"Well then, make him a very artful card—a low sort of man—a sort of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them—a black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began."

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."

"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no imagination."

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right. You're the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship—like a big boat." This was maddening.

"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so yourself," I protested.

"No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because---------------------

By Jove you're right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. Of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails."

Surely, I thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys at least—in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired "political man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the man "red as a red bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.

"Why 'of course,' Charlie?" said I.

"I don't know. Are you making fun of me?"

The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and pretended to make many entries in it.

"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said, after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the hero is simply wonderful."

"Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell myself that there's more in me than my mo—than people think."

"There's an enormous amount in you."

"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank-Clerks to Tit-Bits, and get the guinea prize?"

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow: perhaps it would be better to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story."

"Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that. Tit-Bits would publish my name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They would."

"I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes about our story."

Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back, might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the Argo—had been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remcmbering what Grish Chunder had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow Charlie Meats to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie wrote of the ways of bank-clerks.

I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that might not have been compiled at secondhand from other people's books—except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. The adventures of a Viking had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and flying clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet, windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of Wardoun Street work at the end. Then I blessed Charlie in many ways—though it was no fault of his. He seemed to be busy with prize competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. I hardly cared to remind him of the galley when we met; but Charlie alluded to it on every occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made.

"I think I deserve twenty-five per cent., don't I, at least," he said, with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I?"

This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

"When the thing's done we'll talk about it. I can't make anything of it at present. Red-haired or black-haired hero is equally difficult."

He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't understand what you find so difficult. It's all as clear as mud to me," he replied. A jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled softly. "Suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from the time that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the Beaches."

I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of pen and paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the current. The gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods, where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines. Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. Then they ate sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at night. This, and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain. He spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the oars."

The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and I said no word.

"By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say?"

"Something about the galley."

"I remember now. It's twenty-five per cent, of the profits, isn't it?"

"It's anything you like when I've done the tale."

"I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've—I've an appointment." And he left me.

Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire- was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But i thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords of Life and Death!

When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a little parted.

"I've done a poem," he said; and then, quickly: "it's the best I've ever done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

"The day is most fair, the cheery wind

Halloos behind the hill, Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,

And the sapling to his will! Riot O wind; there is that in my blood

That would not have thee still!

"She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky; Grey sea, she is mine alone! Let the sullen boulders hear my cry, And rejoice tho' they be but stonel

"Mine! I have won her O good brown earth, Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring; Make merry; my love is doubly worth

All worship your fields can bring! Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth At the early harrowing."

"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my heart. Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

"Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad; I am victor. Greet me O Sun, Dominant master and absolute lord Over the soul of one!"

"Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth.

"Isn't it—isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't think—it came like a thunderclap."

"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"

"My God—she—she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past lives.

"What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.

"I don't care a damn what she says."

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed by a man before.

Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

"Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause in the rush of the speech. Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley—what galley? Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious it is!"

Grish Chunder was right. Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.

From Etched in Moonlight, by James Stephens, reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, New York, and Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London.

Etcked in Moonligkt

By JAMES STEPHENS

He waved his pipe at me angrily :

"Words," he said. "We are doped with words, and we go to sleep on them and snore about them. So with dream. We issue tomes about it, and we might as well issue writs for all the information we give."

I halted him there, for I respect science and love investigation.

"Scientists don't claim to give answers to the riddles of existence," I expostulated, "their business is to gather and classify whatever facts are available, and when a sufficient number of these have been collected there is usually found among them an extra thing which makes examination possible."

"Hum!" said he.

"The difficulty lies in getting all the facts, but when these are given much more is given; for if a question can be fully stated the answer is conveyed in the question."

"That's it," said he, "they don't know enough, but there is a wide
pretence---- "

"More a prophecy than a pretence. They really state that this or that thing is knowable. It is only that you live hurriedly, and you think everything else should be geared up to your number."

"And they are so geared, or they would not be visible and audible and tangible to me. But a ghost is geared differently to me; and I think that when I am asleep and dreaming I am geared differently to the person who is talking to you here." "Possibly."

"Certainly. Look at the time it has taken you and I to chatter our mutual nonsense. In an instant of that time I could have had a dream; and, in its infinitesimal duration, all the adventures and excitements of twenty or forty years could take place in ample and leisurely sequence. Someone has measured dream, and has recorded that elaborate and complicated dreams covering years of time can take place while you would be saying knife."

"It was du Prell," I said.

"Whoever it was, I've seen a person awake and talking, but sleepy; noted that person halt for the beat of a word in his sentence, and continue with the statement that he has had a horrible dream. It must have taken place in the blink of an eye. There is no doubt that while we are asleep a power is waking in us which is more amazing than any function we know of in waking life. It is lightning activity, lightning order, lightning intelligence; and that is not to be considered as rhetoric, but as sober statement. The proposition being, that in sleep the mind does actually move at the speed of lightning."

He went on more soberly:

"Last night I had a dream, and in it twenty good years were lived through with all their days and nights in the proper places; and a whole chain of sequential incidents working from the most definite beginning to the most adequate end—and perhaps it all took place between the beginning and the ending of a yawn."

"Well, let us have the dream," said I; "for it is clear that you are spoiling to tell it."

He devoted himself anew for a few moments to his pipe and to his thoughts, and, having arranged that both of these were in working order, he recommenced:

"After all this you will naturally expect that something dramatic or astonishing should follow; but it is not surprise, not even interest that is the centre of my thought about this dream. The chief person in the dream was myself; that is certain. The feeling of identity was complete during the dream; but my self in the dream was as unlike my self sitting here as you and I are unlike each other. I had a different physique in the dream; for, while I am now rather dumpish and

fair and moonfaced, I was, last night, long and lean as a rake, with a black thatch sprouting over a hatchet head. I was different mentally; my character was not the one I now recognise myself by; and I was capable of being intrigued by events and speculations in which the person sitting before you would not take the slightest interest."

He paused for a few seconds as though reviewing his memories; but, on a movement from me, he continued again, with many pauses, and with much snorings on his pipe, as tho' he were drawing both encouragement and dubiety from it.

"Of course I am romantically minded. We all are; the cat and the dog are. All life, and all that is in it, is romantic, for we and they and it are growing into a future that is all mystery out of a past not less mysterious; and the fear or hope that reaches to us from these extremes are facets of the romance which is life or consciousness, or whatever else we please to name it.

"But," he said, energetically, "I do not pine to rescue a distressed dragon from a savage maiden; nor do I dream of myself dispensing life and death and immortality with a spoon. Life is Romance; I am living and I am Romance; and that adventure is as much as I have the ability to embark on.

"Well, last night, in a dream, I was a person natively capable of such embarkations; and altho' I did not rescue anything from anybody, I am sure I should have done it as one to the manner bom. And that character fitted me there, then, as a cat fits into its skin.

"In the dream I was unmistakable I, but I was not this I, either physically, mentally, or temperamentally.

"And the time was different. I don't know what date it was, but it was not to-day. I don't know what place it was, but it was not this place. I was acting in a convention foreign to the one we act in, and I was acting from an historical or ancestral convention which has no parallel in these times. I don't remember what language I was speaking. I don't remember the names of the people I was in contact with; nor do I recollect addressing anybody by name. I was too familiar with them to require such explanatory symbols. You and I have been chattering these years—do we ever call one another by a name? There is no need to do so; and there was no need to do so with the people of my dream."

He halted, regarding me.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" he said.

"Do not push casual mountains on my head," I replied, "but get on with the dream."

"Well," said he, "I dreamed a dream and here is the dream."

My mind was full of disquietude, impatience, anger; and as the horse stretched and eased under me I dwelt on my own thought. I did not pursue it, for I was not actively thoughtful. I hatched it. I sat on a thought and kept it warm and alive without feeling any desire to make it grow.

"She shall end it to-day," I thought in summary.

And then:

I'll end it to-day.

And thereon I ceased thinking, for when the will has been invoked a true, the truest, act of being has been accomplished, and the mind, which never questions the will, may go on holiday. As against willing all thought is a form of laziness, and my thought, having in that realm neither business nor interest, went lazily to the nearest simple occurrence that could employ it, and I became only a person on a horse; listening to the horse; looking at it; feeling it with my limbs and feeling myself by its aid.

There was great pleasure in the way my legs gripped around that warm barrel; in the way my hands held the beast's head up; in the way my waist and loins swayed and curved with the swaying and curving of the animal. I touched her with my toe and tapped her neck; and on the moment she tossed her head, shaking a cascade of mane about my hands; gathered her body into a bunch of muscles, and unloosed them again in a great gallop; while from behind the hooves of my servant's beast began to smack and pelt.

In some reaches the surrounding country flowed into and over the track; and everywhere in its length the grass threw a sprinkle of green. There were holes here and there; but more generally there were hollows which had been holes, and which had in time accumulated driftage of one kind or another, so that they had a fullish appearance without having anything of a level look; but on the whole I knew of worse roads, and this one was kept in tolerable repair.

Not far from this place we left the road and struck along a sunken path all grown over at the top with shadowing trees; and so to another and much better-kept road, and on this one I shook out the reins and we went galloping.

It was not unknown to me, this place. Indeed it was so well known that I had no need to look to one side or the other, for everything that was to be seen had been seen by me many hundreds of times; and, if we except grass and trees and grazing cattle, there was nothing to be seen.

Here and there rude dwellings came to view. Low shanties patched together with mud and rock, and all browned and baked by the sun and the rain; and as I rode, these small habitations became more numerous, and from them dogs and children swarmed, snarling and yelping and squeaking.

Again these fell behind, and on another tum a great park came to the view; and across it a building showed gaunt and massive, with turrets at the corners and in front, and the black silhouettes of men were moving in those airy tops.

My horse pulled up, all spread-eagled and snorting, before a flight of stone steps, before which and on which armed men were clustered and pacing, and I went up those steps as one having right of entry. At the top I stood for an instant to look back on the rolling grass through which I had galloped a minute before.

The evening was approaching. Ragged clouds, yet shot with sunlight, were piling in the sky, and there was a surmised but scarcely perceptible greyness in the air. Over the grass silence was coming, almost physically, so that the armed rattle and tramp and the chatter of voices about me had a detached sound, as though these were but momentary interruptions of the great silence that was on its way. That quietude, premonition of silence, brings with it a chill to the heart; as tho' an unseen presence whispered something, unintelligible but understood; conveying a warning that the night comes, that silence comes, that an end comes to all movement of mind and limb.

For when I parted from my horse I parted from my mood; and was again a discontented person, filled with an impatience that seethed within me as water bubbles in a boiling pot.

"She," I thought, "shall choose to-day whether she likes to or not."

And, having expressed itself, my will set in that determination as a rock is set in a stream.

A person came to my beckoning finger, and replied to my enquiry—

"Your honour is expected. Will your honour be. pleased to follow me?"

She was sitting in the midst of a company and on my approach gave me her hand to kiss. I saluted it half kneeling, and raking her eyes with a savage stare, which she returned with the quiet constancy to which I was accustomed and which always set me wild, so that the wish I had to beat her was only laid by the other—and overflowing —desire I had to kiss her.

I rose to my feet, stepped some paces back, and the conversation I had interrupted recommenced.

I was intensely aware of her and of myself; but saving for us the place was empty for me. I could feel my chin sinking to my breast; feel my eyes strained upwards in my bent face; feel my body projecting itself against the lips I stared at; and I knew that she was not unaware of me.

As she spoke, her eyes strayed continually to me, carelessly, irresistibly, and swung over or under me and would not look at me. She could do that while she was talking, but while she was listening she could only half do it; for when her tongue was stilled I caught her mind or her body and held her and drew her; so that, would she or would she not, she had to look at me. And I delighted in that savage impression of myself upon her; following her nerves with the cunning of one who could see within her; and guiding her, holding her, all the time to me, to me, to me. . . . And then she looked, and I was baffled anew; for her eye was as light, as calm, as inexpressive as the bright twinkle of a raindrop that hangs and shivers on a twig.

But the game was broken by a tap on my shoulder, and, at the moment, her voice stumbled on the word she was uttering, her eyes leaped into mine and looked there, and then she was talking again and merry and gracious.

It is a little difficult to explain these things, for I can give no name to the people I am speaking of; nor can I say how I was known to them; but I knew their names and qualities well and they knew mine: so, at the tap on my shoulder, I, knowing whom I should see, turned my eyes to that direction, and saw, for our brows were level, a great golden head, great blue eyes and, just under the rim of vision, a great pair of shoulders.

Everything about him was great in bulk and in quality, and with the exception of our mistress, I had never met one so founded in strength and security as he was.

We turned amicably and went from the room together; out of the great building and across the fields; and as our feet moved rhythmically in the grass we smiled at each other, for indeed I loved him as my own soul and he loved me no less.

As we paced in long slow strides the darkness had already begun to.be visible, for the second half of twilight v/as about us. Away in the direction towards which we trod an ashen sky kept a few dull embers, where, beyond sight, down on the rim of the horizon, the sun had set.

There was silence except for the innumerable rustling bred of grass and quiet trees and a wind too delicate to be heard and scarcely to be felt; for, though the skies were brisk, there was but little ground wind. Naught moved in the trees but the high tender branches that swayed lazily and all alone; leading their aery existence so far from my turbulence of passion that I chid them for their carelessness of one, who, in the very cleft of anxiety, could find an instant to remember them in.

At a time, even while we strode forward, we turned again and retraced our steps; and my mind took one shade more of moodiness. It was he had turned and not I. It was he always who did the thing that I was about to do one moment before I could do it; and he did it unthinkingly, assuredly; with no idea that rebellion might be about him; or that, being there, it could become manifest.

We re-entered and sat to meat with a great company, and she spoke to us equally and frankly and spoke to others with the gracious ease which was never for a moment apart from her.

But I, brooding on her, intent on her as with internal ears and eyes and fingers, felt in her an unwonted excitement, touched something in her which was not usual. When she looked at me that feeling was intensified; for her bright, brief glance, masked as it was and careless as it seemed, held converse with me, as though in some realm of the spirit we were in unguarded communion.

We were close together then; nearer to each other than we should be again; so close that I could feel with a pang by what a distance we might be separated; and could feel with doubled woe that she grieved for that which she could not comfort.

We left the table.

Little by little the company separated into small companies, and in a while the great room was boisterous with conversation. They had withdrawn and were talking earnestly together; and I was roving about the room, sitting for a breath with this company and that; listening to my neighbours with an ear that was hearkening elsewhere; and replying to them in terms that might or might not have been relevant to the subject I chanced on.

But in all my movements I managed to be in a position from which I could watch those two; so close in converse, so grave in their conduct of it; so alive to all that was happening about them; and yet sunk spheres below the noise and gaiety of our companions.

Her eye looked into mine, calling to me; and at the signal I left my sentence at its middle and went towards them.

Crossing the room I had a curious perception of their eyes as they watched me advancing; and, for the first time, I observed the gulf which goes about all people and which isolates each irreparably from his fellows. A sense of unreality came upon me, and, as I looked on them, I looked on mystery; and they, staring at me, saw the unknown walking to them on legs. At a stroke we had become strangers, and all the apprehension of strangers looked through our eyes.

She arose when I came within a few paces of them.

"Let us go out," said she.

And we went out quietly.

Again I was in the open. I breathed deeply of the chill air as though drawing on a fount of life; as though striving to draw strength and sustenance and will into my mind.

But the time had come to put an end to what I thought of evasively as "all this"; for I was loath to submit plainly to myself what "all this" noted. I took my will in my hand, as it were, and became the will to do, I scarcely knew what; for to one unused to the discipline and use of will there is but one approach to it, and it is through anger. The first experience of willing is brutal; and it is as though a weapon of offence, a spear or club, were in one's hand; and as I walked I began to tingle and stir with useless rage.

For they were quiet, and against my latent impetuosity they opposed that massive barrier from which I lapsed back helplessly.

Excitement I understood and loved; the quicker it mounted, the higher it surged, the higher went I. Always above it, master of it. Almost I was excitement incarnate; ready for anything that might befall, if only it were heady and masterless. But the quietude of those left me like one in a void, where no wing could find a grip and where I scarce knew how to breathe.

It was now early night.

The day was finished and all that remembered the sun had gone. The wind which had stirred faintly in tall branches had lapsed to rest. No breath moved in the world, and the clouds that had hurried before were quiet now, or were journeying in other regions of the air. Clouds there were in plenty; huge, pilings of light and shade; for a great moon, burnished and thin, and so translucent that a narrowing of the eyes might almost let one peer through it, was standing far to the left; and in the spaces between the clouds there was a sharp scarce glitter of stars.

There was more than light enough to walk by; for that great disc of the heavens poured a radiance about us that was almost as bright as day.

Now as I walked the rage that had begun to stir within ceased again, and there crept into me so dull a lassitude that had death stalked to us in the field I should not have stepped from his way.

I surrendered everything on the moment; and, for the mind must justify conduct, I justified myself in the thought that nothing was worth this trouble; and that nothing was so desirable but it could be matched elsewhere, or done without.

It is true that the mind thinks only what desire dictates; and that when desire flags thought will become ignoble. My will had flagged, for I had held it too many hours as in a vice; and I was fatigued with that most terrible of exercises.

The silence of those indomitable people weighed upon me; and the silence of the night, and the chill of that large, white moon burdened me also. Therefore, when they came to talk to me, I listened peacefully; if one may term that state of surrender peace. I listened in a cowardly quietness; replying more by a movement of the hands than by words; and when words were indispensable making brief use of them.

It was she who spoke, and her tone was gentle and anxious and official:

"We have arranged to marry," said she. To that I made no reply.

I took the information on the surface of my mind as one receives an arrow on a shield, and I did not permit it to enter further. There, in neutral ground, the sentence lay; and there I could look on it with the aloof curiosity of one who examines an alien thing.

"They were going to get married!" Well . . . But what had it to do with me? Everyone got married sometime, and they were going to get married. This was a matter in which I had no part, for they were not going to get married to me: they were going to marry each other; it was all no business of mine.

So a weary brain thinks weary thoughts; and so I thought; separating myself languidly from the business of those who were making me a partner in their affairs. All I desired was that the explanations should cease, and that I might heave myself into a saddle and jog quietly to my own place.

But I knew, almost with sickness, that I could not go until this sentence had been explained and re-explaincd. They would inevitably consider that I could not grasp its swollen import until they had spoken under it and over it; and explained that there was a necessity for it; and detailed me that also.

I could foresee a dreary hour that would drone and drone with an unending amplification of duty and interest and love, and a whole metaphysic to bind these together.

Love! They would come to that at last. But when they dared the word they would not leave it while they had a tooth to put into it.

They would tell me around it and about; and the telling would excite them to a fury of retelling. I should have its history, and all the din and crackle of all the words that could be remembered on that subject or germane to it.

I found it happen so.

I was initiated into the secrets of their duty to their people and to themselves. I learned the intricacy of the interests wherein all parties were involved; until it was impossible to tell where duty ended and interest began. And, in the inevitable sequel, I was the confidant of their love. And I listened to that endless tale with the drowsy acquiescence of one moonstruck and gaping . . . drowsily nodding; murmuring my yes and yes drowsily. . . .

They were good to me. They were sisterly and brotherly to me. By no hairsbreadth of reticence was I excluded from their thoughts, their expectations, their present felicity, and their hopes of joy to come. For two people going alone may have verbal and bodily restraint but the company of a third will set them rabid. It is as though that unnecessary presence were a challenge, or a query, which they must dispose of or die. Therefore, and because of me, they had to take each other's hand. They had to fondle paw within paw; and gaze searchingly on each other and on me; with, for me, a beam of trust and brotherliness and inclusion which my mood found sottish.

They were in love.

They whispered it to each other. They said it loudly to me. And more loudly yet they urged it, as though they would proclaim it to the moon. . . . And about their hands was a vile activity; a lust of catching; a fever of relinquishing; for they could neither hold nor withhold their hands from each other.

"Do they expect me to clasp their hands together, and hold them so that they shall not unloose again? Do they wish me to draw their heads together, so that they may kiss by compulsion? Am I to be the page of love and pull these arms about each other?"

We walked on, heedless of time; and I heedless of all but those voices that came to me with an unending, unheard explanation; the voices of those who cared naught for me; who cared only that I was there, an edge to their voluptuousness.

But when one walks one arrives somewhere. If the environment had not changed we might have gone on for ever. This walk and talk had grown into us like a monstrous habit from which we could not break away; and until a change came to the eye our minds could not swerve from the world they were building nor our feet from the grasses we walked on.

A change did occur, mercifully; the little variety which might de-turn that level of moonbred, lovesick continuity or inertia; for we think largely through the eyes, or our thoughts flow easily to the direction in which our gaze is set.

The great park, waving with separated trees, came abruptly to an end.

At this step it was yet a sward. But ten paces beyond it was a rubble of bush and rock, unkempt as a beggarman's beard. Everywhere there were bits of walls with crumbling ledges up which the earth was gradually mounting and which the grass had already conquered.

Under the beam of that great flat moon the place seemed wildly beautiful; with every mound a glory of silver and peace, and every hollow a pit of blackness and mystery. A little beyond, perfect, although in the hub and centre of ruin, a vast edifice reared against the sky, and it shone white as snow in the moonlight except where a projecting battlement threw an ebon shade.

"The old castle," said she. "I have not walked this way in ten years."

And, saying so, she walked to it.

I had never been that way, and I looked on that massive pile of silence almost with expectation, as tho' a door might open and something emerge, or a voice roar rustily at us from the moon-clad top.

It was old, and it was built as they built of old and build no more; for the walls were fifteen feet thick, and time might have sat before it through half-etemity marvelling by what arts such a solidity could possibly be reduced.

We paced about it, wondering at it, and at the silence which came to and from it; and marvelling that men had with such patience consummated so vast a labour; for the lives of generations had passed e'er this was ended and secure.

There was but one door, and we came on this in our silent walk. It was swung to, but was yet open just a little; barely a foot of opening; a dense black slit in the moonlight.

"I must slip in," said she.

He smiled at her, catching again her hand. And into his ear, but with her eyes fixed on mine, she said:

"I want to whisper something in the ear of silence and desolation."

She slipped within; and, when in, she pulled at his hand. With a look at me half laughing, half apologetic, he squeezed after her; and I was alone staring at the bossed and plated door.

There was silence without and within, but I found that my eyes were fixed on that silence within; and from it, as I expected, almost as I willed, there came, as though bred from the silence, a sound. It was ten times more discreet than a whisper, and was to be heard only by an ear that knew it would come.

A sudden panic leaped within my heart and rolled into my ears like a beaten drum; and that rage of fear was my memory, sprung suddenly from nowhere, of the hands that had gripped and released each other; of the eyes that had flashed upon eye and lip; of the bodies that had swung tenderly sideways and fell languidly away again.

And at that my mind emptied itself of thought, and I saw nothing, heard nothing, was nothing. Only in my head there came again a sudden great throb as though a muffled bell had thudded inside it. My hands went out without any direction from me; they gripped on the door; and, with the strength of ten men, I pulled on it.

It fell to with a crash which might have been heard about the earth; and yet which let through one infinitesimal fraction of sound; a beginning of sound only; so tiny, it could scarcely be heard, so tense that the uproar of doom could not have covered that sound from my ear.

It began and it never finished, for it never continued. Its beginning was caught and prevented; but within my ear it continued and completed itself, as a scream which I should never cease to hear; while still with hanging jaw and fixed eyes I stared at the closed door.

I walked away.

I turned from the place and went slowly in the direction we had come.

I was a walking statue; a bodily movement only; for the man within had temporarily ceased to be. Within I was a silence brooding on silence and darkness. No smallest thought, no stir towards thinking crept in my mind; but yet I was not quite as a dead man walking, for something was happening ... I was listening. I was listening for them to speak in my heart. . . .

And then i began to run; a steady pelt of running, as though I could run away from them, mewed in that stony den, and yet liable to shriek on me from the centre of my being.

Again the change to the eye brought change to the mind; and when I sighted the great building all glimmering with lights I came to my breathless self.

I went to the stables; found my man; and in five minutes was in the saddle, and, with him behind, went plunging through the darkness towards my own place.

How often during that ride did I clench my hand to pull on the rein and go back to release them. Every minute, every second, I was going to do it. But every minute, every second, my hand refrained from pulling on the horse, and my heels gave her notice to go yet faster.

For I was not quite a man. I was an inertia ... or I was the horse. I was something that ran; and my whole being was an unexpressed wish to run and never stop. I did not even wish to come to my place; for, arriving there, I must halt and dismount, and fumble and totter among obstacles of doors and people. . . .

That halt had to come; and I dismounted in a mood that merged rapidly from impatience to anger, and from that to almost blind fury. In a little while my dispositions were made, and i was on the road again on a fresh beast, a bag of money and valuables strapped on the nag, and behind me two servants coming on at a gallop.

I was running away from the country. I was running away from those two mewed in the prison to which nobody knew they had gone. But more urgently even than that I was running away from myself.

There comes an interval which my recollection would figure as ten or twelve years. During this time I did not return to my own country, and, so far as was possible, I did not even think of it.

For it was in my nature to forget easily; or, by an effort of the will, to prevent myself remembering whatever I considered inconvenient or distressing. I could put trouble to one side as with a gesture, and this trouble I put away and did not again admit into mind.

But a trouble that is buried is not disposed of. Be the will ever so willing, the mind ever so obedient, a memory cannot be destroyed until it has reached its due time and evolved in its proper phases.

A memory may die in the mind as peacefully as an old man dies in his bed; and it will rest there tranquilly, and moulder into true forget-fulness, as the other debris moulders into dust. But a memory cannot be buried alive; for in this state of arrested being, where it can neither grow old nor die, it takes on a perpetual unused youth, and lies at the base of one's nature as an unheard protest; calling to the nerves instead of to the brain, and strumming on these with an obstinate patience and an unending fertility of resource.

It has been banished from the surface to the depths; and in the deep of being, just beyond the borders of thought, it lies, ready as at the lifting of a finger to leap across these borders, as new and more poignant than at its creation.

Upon those having the gift of mental dismissal a revenge is taken. They grow inevitably irritable; and are subject to gusts of rage so unrelated to a present event that their contemporaries must look upon them as irresponsible.

A buried thought like a buried body will rot; and it will spread a pestilence through the moral being that is its grave or its gaoler.

It was so with me. •

From being one frank and impetuous and careless, I became moody, choleric, suspicious; and so temperamentally unstable that as I could not depend on myself so no one else could depend on me either.

All things that were commenced by me had to be finished by another; for in the very gust and flooding of success I would throw myself aside from it; or bear myself so outrageously that my companions would prefer failure and my absence to a success which had me within a league of the prize.

Everything, even a memory, must be faced at last. No man can rest until he has conquered or surrendered to his enemy; for, be success attained or failure, a legitimate boume is reached wherein the mind may acquiesce and be at one with the result.

So, one day, I unburied my dead; looking upon it with a curiosity and fear which were the equal of each other; and having once looked I could not forbear to look again; until I became a patient, timid devotee of my own evil.

A treacherous story in truth; and if repentance could have retrieved my crime how quickly it had been erased. But the fact of repentance comes home only to the person in fault. It has no value for the victim; for a man may outrun the laws of man, but the law of his self he can neither distance nor dodge.

Half the value of an act is its reaction, for the one pays and completes the other. My act was vanity and here came shame to make of it a total; and there, in the mixture of the two, was I, fully expressed and condemned. Vanity had sentenced me to shame; and shame would take up the tale again with vanity, and would lead me to the further justice of which I had need. For that which we do outwardly we do inwardly. We condemn or reward ourselves in every action; and the punishment we receive is due to us in a sense deeper than that indicated in the word retribution.

I thought of those two; and I thought of them shyly as one who no longer had the right even to remember them. For they had counted on my nature as they judged it; on my honour as they knew it; and on my friendship as they thought to have proved it. But into these aspects of me they had been sucked as into a bog. I had given way under their feet and they had sunk into and died in me.

Was it a wonder that I fled across the fields fearful lest they might scream to me from my soul? Alas, it was there they had been betrayed, and there were buried; wherever else their bones might whiten.

And now I began to brood on them deeply and perpetually, until nothing in the world was so important as they were, and they became me almost in my entirety.

I reconstructed them and myself, and the happy days which had preceded that most wicked of hours; and I knew that, whatever other enmity or suspicion had been in the world, there had been naught but friendship between us and the frankest and freest trust. I had reason to trust them, and had given them occasion to believe that in my keeping their honour and their all was safe; and to that trust I had given the lie at the moment of its reposal.

Indeed I was stupefied to think that I had committed this baseness; for on behalf of these two I would have counted on my own loyalty with as little calculation as they had.

There was indeed something to be said for me if that enquiry were rigorously pursued. But it was a poor thing and only to be advanced in my favour for it could not be urged.

She had halted between us for a long time; not balancing our values or possibilities; but humanly unwilling to judge, and womanly unable to wound. That delicate adjustment could not have continued indefinitely; but it would have continued longer had I not forced the issue, or stated the position; and once that a case is truly stated nothing remains but the judgment which is already apparent in the statement.

It was I had failed in the trial. I whose nerves gave way. I who became impatient and would gamble on the chance; and the gambler is always an incomplete man. In all real things the gambler must lose, for he is staking on chance that which can only be won by the knowledge which is concreted merit; and in all memorable deeds the personality must win, and chance have not even the ghost of a chance.

They had bettered me; and, although they were dead and I alive, they were beyond me and topped me as a lion tops a dog.

So, pride having proved to me that I was treacherous, shame came to teach me the great lesson of life; for in humility the mind is released from fleshy fogs and vapours; and in that state only can it be directed to its single natural work, the elucidation of character.

Ideas which enter the mind only have no motive force—they are alive, but have not yet energy. They exist but as subjects of conversation, as intellectual gossip, but before a thought can become an act it must sink deeper than the mind and into the imagination where abides the true energy of all thinking creatures. It is not the mind but the imagination that sets the will to work; and both mind and will obey it instantly, as a horse winces instantly to the touch of a spur.

So these two, having got into my imagination, could not be let out again, until it was satisfied that all which could be done was done, and a moral as well as a logical end arrived at.

I took to horse, therefore, and set out for home.

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Apart from my adventure with those people my memory is blurred. My dealings and encounters with them arc distinct as though they happened to-day; but the portions of the narrative interspacing that adventure have already more than half faded from memory. Yet it seems to me that my journey back was a long one, and that ships had to be taken as well as horses ere I had returned and could recognise landmarks and faces.

In many of these recognitions the passage of time was marked for me as tho' it had been written.

Here was a dwelling which had not before been here: and in this place, where a house had been, there was a roofless ruin.

Here a man tended his sheep. When I passed the last time he had not been old; but his beard had whitened as though in one night of snow.

I passed youths and girls who knew me and stood aside; but they had changed from the children I might have remembered into lusty and lengthy and unknown people.

The word that I was coming must have far preceded me, for these people recognised me with curiosity but without astonishment; and in my own house I was clearly expected and welcomed with all the preparedness a master might hope for.

I had not hoped for any welcome, and would have preferred to come back as anonymously as a bird does who returns to its last year's hedge; for, although I did not wish to escape anything that might be in keeping for me, I did desire to inform myself of the circumstances by which I should be surrounded, and the dangers that I might have to front.

There was no hint of danger or disquietude among my people. Their welcome was as free, their service as easy and accustomed as though I had returned from a visit to the next town. And the marvel of this almost stupefied me; while the impossibility of demanding direct information from those unsuspicious people plunged me in dismay.

I thought to myself—"The bodies have never been found, and, by some extraordinary chance, suspicion has not turned upon me for their disappearance."

At the thought a weight was lifted from my soul; but only for a moment; for I had not come back in search of security, but in order that whatever debt was due by me should be paid.

But I had to know how things were, and, after eating, the man of whom I enquired, replied that my return was known at the Castle (as I shall call it) and that a visit from its châtelains was expected on the next day to welcome me home.

With this news my alarm vanished and an almost excessive joy took its place. My mind lightened, and poured into my body, as from a fountain, well-being and energy.

For how long? Was it more than ten minutes? ten seconds? The mind that can hold joy must be strong indeed. I could no more contain it than I could round the sea in my palm; and, almost as it had swirled into me, it swept out; leaving behind only that to which I had a right and which was my own.

Nothing happens without mental acquiescence, and that which had emptied my mind of joy and my body of buoyancy was the memory that I should see them on the morrow, and, with that memory, egotism pushed up its head and I thought—"They will not meet the unfledged youngster they parted from!"

That was all. But it was sufficient to ride me as I would ride a horse, and to pull me round to its direction, and to the vanity I imagined to have left behind.

I chid myself for a fool. I looked back with a lightning eye on the wasted years; the useless misery; the unnecessary toil and sordid excitement through which I had passed; and at a stroke my mind became filled with a tumult and admixture of emotions which no one word would synthesise, nor could I describe them in many words.

In undisciplined minds a conflict of thought will provoke anger or sleep; but in almost any mind a conflict of emotion will breed rage; and, for the mind is lazy, a thought will seek for an emotion to rest on, and will lie in it as in a bed. So nobility rots in dream, and action grows stagnant in imagining itself. Behind life is laziness, and from it, in direct descent or ascent, is desire and lust and anger, which master words describe up to a point the world and its working.

Thus, having torn myself out of anger as from a pit, I hurried back to it, and I found that I was thinking of my coming visitors with a dislike which was as near to hatred as I could arrive at.

They were alive, and I had paid for their death! I had wasted myself and my years grieving for them; repenting for them; idealising them in a dull torment and agitation of nerve and brain!

For nothing! And nothing became symbolised by them. They stood for it: they were Nothing; and, with that, vanity was in possession again, for I stood for something as against their nothing; and all the coil of pride and shame and payment had to recommence.

They came, and for a time resentment was covered by curiosity; and while we talked together I found myself glancing at one and the other with the curiosity of him who peeps at a camel or a criminal.

There was a difference in them, but it was not essential; it was only the change which comes with the passage of time.

All that I remembered was here, but more pronounced. What had been quietude had deepened to tranquillity. All that sense of certainty and command was more certain and commanding, for ease and power and good humour was as unconsidered and native a part of them as their limbs.

He had been great in bulk, he was now huge. He had filled out, and filled in, and he strode and towered like a mountain.

Her I remembered as one remembers a day of April beauty and promise, various with that uncertainty which troubles and delights. Now summer was on her with all its gorgeous endowment.

She was a rest to the eye. She was a benediction to the senses. She calmed desire. For to look on her was to desire no more, and yet to be satisfied. Her beauty was so human, her humanity so beautiful, that she could embrace the thought that would embrace her; and return it absolved, purified, virgin again to the lust that sent it out.

There are beings in this world who are secured against every machination of evil. They live as by divine right, as under divine protection; and when malice looks in their faces it is abashed and must retreat without harming them. All the actions of these are harmonious and harmless and assured; and in no circumstances can they be put in the wrong, nor turned from their purpose. Their trust is boundless, and, as they cannot be harmed, so it cannot be betrayed. They are given their heaven on earth as others are here given their hell; and what they get they must have deserved; and they must indeed be close to divinity.

Of such were these, and I hated them with a powerlessness which was a rage of humility; and I mourned for myself as the hare may mourn who is caught in a trap and knows that it will kill him.

I did not hate them, for they could not be hated. My egotism envied them. My shame, and, from it, my resentment, was too recent to be laid, though the eyes of a dove looked into mine and the friendliest hand was on my shoulder. Something obstinate within my soul, something over which I had no charge, stiffened against them; and if one part of my nature yearned for surrender and peace the other part held it back, and so easily that there was never a question as to where obedience must go.

I was easy with them and as careless as I had ever been; and the fact that I had not harmed them put out of my mind the truth that I had tried to do so. Not by a look, an intonation, did they show a memory of that years'-old episode; and what they could forget I could forget as quickly; or could replace by the recollection that in a distant time they had set me adrift in a world of torment.

This did not express itself even in my mind. It lay there like a bulk of unthought thought; which, as it was expressed in its entirety and not in its parts, had to be understood by the nerves where the intelligence lacked width and grasp; and there was I again in the trough of the sea and twisting to any wind.

In a little time I had reaccustomed myself to the new order of things. The immediate past of wandering and strife grew less to be remembered, and my new way of life became sequential and expected.

I knew, and there is contentment in that kind of knowledge, exactly what I should do on the morrow; and I might have ventured a prediction as to how I should be employed in the month to come. For life gathered about me in a web of unhasty occupation and untiring leisure; so that the tiring to be done and the doing of it flowed sweetly to each other; and all was accomplished without force, and almost without volition.

Many times my horse took that well-remembered road, and it became as natural to me to turn in that direction as to turn to the rooms of my own house. For I found there much that I desired, even unconsciously: friendship, companionship, and, more than all, gaiety; for their young lusty brood began to knit themselves about my life and knot themselves into it.

To go from a sedate, unruffled house into a home that seethes with energy and innocence, and all the animation of budding life, is a notable thing for one who has come to the middle term; and though he had before suffered children with a benevolent impatience he grows to be thankful if they will notice him with even an approach to interest.

It is a blessed thing that whoever wishes to be welcomed benevolently by a child will be so welcomed; for the order of young years is to respond, and they do that without reservation. Children and animals, however we can hurt, we cannot hate; for they are without reserve; and that lack is the one entirely lovable quality in the world.

In the meantime events moved with me, for they, having settled their own lives, charged themselves with the arrangement of mine; and, by a delicate, untiring management, I found myself growing more friendly or more accustomed to a lady of her kin; whom, at last, they expected me to marry; who certainly expected to marry me; and whom I should wed when the time came with neither reluctance nor impatience. But this lady I do not remember even slightly. She is a shade; a fading smile, and exists for me as a dream within the dream.

It was settled, and whether I or they or she arranged it I no longer know. It may have been just propinquity, or that sense of endlessness, that inertia of speech, which causes one to continue talking when there is no more to be said; so that, and inevitably, one asks a girl to marry one, there being nothing left to be said; and she, terrified lest silence should fall upon her, agrees to do so, and marvels thereat until she is endlessly wed.

So I asked and she replied; and those who take charge of such arrangements took charge of this; and settled all about time and place, and removed every impediment to our union.

It was the night before my wedding, and I was filled with that desolation of the traveller who must set forth on the morrow, and does not quite know where he is going, nor why he should go there. I had, as was now my custom, taken horse and gone to the castle. The girl I should marry was there, and those two who walked like gods on the earth and who stirred like worms in my mind.

We talked and ate, but beyond that I can only remember the atmosphere of smiles and kindliness to which I was accustomed.

My recollection begins towards nightfall. I had kissed that girl's hands and she went away to her bed; and I was preparing to perform the same duty to my hostess, when she postponed it.

"It is a lovely night," she said, "and," looking at her husband, meaningly, as I thought, "after to-morrow we three shall not be the companions we have been. We shall not meet so often nor so carelessly."

To my glance of enquiry she continued, smilingly:

"A husband belongs to his wife. Your leisure will henceforth have so many claims on it that we may see little of you. When we see you again we may, like drunken men, see you double."

My glance was humorous but questioning.

"Let us take a last walk," she suggested.

"Yes," her husband assented. "One more walk of comrades; one more comfortable talk, and then let to-morrow work what changes it may."

It was a lovely night, with a sky swept bare of all but the moon.

High in the air, bare and bright and round, she rode in beauty. And, but for her, we might have seen how lonely was the blue serene that swung about her. Naught stayed in that immense for eye or ear. Naught stirred or crept. All slept but sheer, clear space and silence. And they, with the wonder of the wide, high heaven, were wonderful.

Afar, apart, in lovely alternating jet and silver, the sparse trees dreamed. They seemed as turned upon themselves. As elves they brooded; green in green; whisht and inhuman and serene.

All moved within.

All was indrawn.

All was infolded and in solitude.

The sky, the grass, the very earth rejected knowing; and we hied with the moon as though she and we were atune to naught beside.

Against that blank withdrawal we struggled as the uneasy dead may, who would regain a realm in which they can find no footing. Silence came on us as at a command; and we were separated and segregated, each from the other, and from all things, as by a gulf.

I looked to the faces on either side of me. They were thin and bright and utterly unknown to me. They seemed wild and questing; stern-poised eagle profiles that were alien in every way to the friendly faces I had known.

And I! I could not see my own face, but I could feel it as a blanch of apprehension.

Why should fear thus flood my being? For there was nothing within me but fear. I was a blank that swirled with terror; and was stilled as suddenly to a calmness scarcely less terrifying. I strove to engage my thoughts in common things, and, with that purpose, I scanned on every side so that my mind might follow my eye and be interested in its chances.

But in the moonlight there is no variety. Variety is colour, and there was about me but an universal shimmer and blanch, wherein all shape was suppressed, and nothing was but an endless monotony and reduplication of formless form.

So we went; and in the quietude we paced through and the quietness we brought with us we scarce seemed living beings.

We were spectres going in a spectral world. Although we walked we did not seem to move; for to that petrified universe our movement brought no change; and each step was but an eddy in changeless space.

I looked at them; at those faces cut by the moon to a sternness of stone; and I knew in a flash that I was not going between friends but between guards; and that their intention towards me was pitiless.

My will was free. I could have turned and walked backwards, and they would not have hindered me in any way. But they might have smiled as they turned, and that smile would be deadly as an arrow in the heart.

To dare be a coward how courageous one must be! I thought with envy of those whose resolution is so firm that they can fly from danger while there is yet a chance. But to be a coward and to be afraid to save oneself! Into what a degradation must one have fallen for that!

I clenched my hands, and at the contact of my nails I went cold to the bone.

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At a certain moment each of those silver-pale faces seemed to look forward more straitly, more distantly; and I, withdrawing my eyes from the grey-toned vegetation at my feet, looked forward also.

We had reached the extreme of the park. Beyond was a rugged, moon-dozed tumble of earth and bush and rock; and beyond again was the vast silver-shining keep, to which, in years long gone, we three had walked; and from which, and in what agony, I once had fled.

In the miracle we call memory I recovered that night, and was afflicted again with the recollection of clasping and unclasping hands, of swaying bodies, and of meeting and flying eyes.

But the same hands made now no mutual movement. Those eyes regarded nothing but distance; and those bodies but walked and did no more. It was my hands that twitched and let go; my eyes that stared and flinched away; my body that went forward while its intuition and intention was to go back.

In truth I did halt for a heart's beat; and when I moved again, I was a pace in advance, for they had stayed on the instant and could not move again so quickly as my mood drove.

I looked at them no more. I looked at nothing. My eyes, although wide, were blind to all outward things, and what they were seeking within me it would be hard to tell.

Was I thinking, or feeling or seeing internally? For I was not unoccupied. Somewhere, in unknown regions of my being, there were busynesses and hurryings and a whole category of happenings, as out of my control as were tire moods of those who went with me.

All thought is a seeing. No idea is real if it be not visualised. To see is to know; to know is to see clearly, and other knowledge than that is mechanical. But as we cannot see beyond a stated range of vision so we cannot speak beyond a definite range of thought. Fear has never uttered itself; nor has joy; nor any emotion that has quickened beyond normality. These stir in a mood too remote for expression by words that are fashioned to tell the common experiences of sense and its action.

How should I tell that which was happening to me as I trod forward; my face as impassive as theirs, my brow as calm? The reaction to extreme events is in the spine or the pit of the stomach, but the action is elsewhere, and is in an organ uncharted yet by man.

I trod with them, free to all appearance as a man can be, and yet bound by fetters which had been forged through long years by myself for myself.

We halted, and I looked again on the bossed and monumental door which stood in my memory almost as a living thing. It was as it had been formerly. A black gape, little more than a foot wide, yawned from the top to the bottom. I noticed the rough herbage sprouting grossly among pebbles at its foot, and the overhanging jut of harsh stone that crowned or frowned from its top. And then I looked at them.

His gaze was bent on me, massive as the stone itself. "Go in," he said.

I looked at her, and although her lips said nothing her eyes, gleaming whitely in the moonlight, commanded as sternly as her husband's voice.

"Go in," he said harshly, "as we went in, and get out, if you can, as we got out."

He reached a monstrous hand to my shoulder; but, at my motion to put it aside, he let it fall; and instead his hand took hold of the great knob. I cast one look at the vast, white moon; at the steady blue spaces about it; at the tumbled sparkle that was the world; and, without a word, I squeezed through the narrow aperture.

I turned and looked back. I had one glimpse of a black form set in a dull radiance. Then the door closed on me with a clang that echoed and echoed and echoed in my ears long after its cause had ceased.

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It was dark where I was.

It was a darkness such as I had never experienced. The blackness about me was solid as ebony. It was impenetrable to thought itself.

It flooded my brain so that the blindness within me was as desperate as that without. I could not keep my eyes open; for, being open, they saw the darkness. I dared not close them; for, being closed, I became that darkness myself. . . .

And at every moment, from the right hand and the left, from before me and from behind me, I imagined things. Darknesses that could move, silences that could touch. . . .

I dared not realise my speculations, and yet, in lightning hints, my mind leaped at and fled from thoughts that were inexpressible except as shivers. My flesh twitched and crept, and I shrank from nothing, as though it could extend a claw; as though it could clutch me with an iron fist. . . .

I was standing yet, long after they had gone, beside the door; fearing to move from it; afraid to stir; and looking about me, as it were, with my ears.

I had no anger against them. I was too occupied for any emotion but those, or that, which was present. I ceased even to think about them; or such seconds of thought as chanced through my agony were humble. They were not forgiving or regretful; they were merely humble, as the thoughts of an overdriven sheep might be towards its driver.

They were gone; and with them everything had gone. I was surrounded by nothingness. I was drowned in it. I was lost and solitary as some grey rock far out in sea. Nay, for the sun shines on it, the wind blows, and a gannet halts there and flaps his wing. There was loneliness nowhere but where I was. There was not such a silence even in the tomb as the silence in which I was centred; for, while the terror of darkness did not diminish, the horror of silence began to grow. And it grew as some monstrous thing may that reproduces itself on itself, tirelessly, timelessly, endlessly.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the mind, for the mind is nature. It will contrive sound when silence oppresses it, and will people any desolation with its own creatures. Alas for man! With what pain he can create how meagre a joy! With what readiness he can make real a misery!

And my ears had two duties to perform! They must look for me as well as listen, and when the mind is occupied in two endeavours something of craziness comes, even in trivial things.

I began to hear, and at no time could I tell what I heard. I began to see, and no words will impart what I saw. I closed both eyes and ears with my fingers, and was aware in a while that my under-jaw was hanging; that my mouth was open; and that I was listening and looking through that.

At the knowledge my will awakened, and I placed calmness forcibly on myself as tho' I were casing my soul in mail. I strode firmly to my right hand, and after a few steps I came against a wall. I strode in the opposite direction, and in double the paces I came against a wall. I walked backwards, and in twenty steps I came against a wall; and following this my groping fingers tapped suddenly in space.

There was an aperture. . . .

My hair rose on my head stiff and prickling. I did not dare to enter that void in the void. I should more willingly have leaped into a furnace. I went from it on tip-toe, striving to make no sound lest that hole should hear me, and tread behind. . . .

It would come noiselessly. And yet it would be heard! It would roll
gently, overwhelmingly, like some new and unimaginable thunder

"No . . . !" I said in panic to my soul, as I trod cautiously from that behind.

"Great God!" I thought, as I stood somewhere, for now I had lost all direction, and was nowhere. "Great God, what shall I do?"

I lowered myself secretly to the ground, groping with a blind hand to make sure that nothing was there. "I will try to sleep," I said in my mind.

Nay, I said it to my mind; striving to command that which I had never learned to control. I huddled my knees up and curved my chin forward like a sleeping dog. I covered my face with my hands, and was still as the stone on which I lay.

"I will try to sleep," I said. "I will think of God," I said.

And it seemed to me that God was the blankness behind, which might advance. And that nothing was so awful as the thought of Him —unimaginable and real! withheld, and imminent, and threatening, and terrific! My knees were listening for Him to the front of me: my back was hearkening from behind; and my brain was engaged elsewhere in matters which I could not cognise.

"If I were to speak aloud!" I thought.

And some part of my mind dared me to do so; wheedled at me to utter one clapping shout: but I knew that at the sound of a voice, of even my own voice, I should die as at a stroke.

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How long did that last? Was it an hour, a year, a lifetime?

Time ceases when emotion begins, and its mechanical spacings are then of no more account. Where is time when we sleep? Where is it when we are angry? There is no time, there is but consciousness and its experiences.

I stayed where I had lain myself, and whether my eyes were open or closed I no longer knew. The miseries of this place had abated. No, that does not express it, for this was no longer a place. This place had disappeared, or it had been merged in the new dimension which I call Nowhere.

It is immeasurably great; it is unimaginably small: for as there is no time so there is no space: there is only being, and its modes: and in that region my misery continued itself far from the knowledge of this brain and beyond the let or hindrance of this body.

And yet somewhere, somehow, I knew something that I can only think of as nothing. An awful, a deadly business was proceeding, with me as the subject. It can only be expressed negatively. Thus I may phrase it, I had gone in the spirit into that aperture from which I had fled. I was in contact with the unmanifest, and that, in its own sphere, is as competent and enduring as are its extensions with which we are familiar. But of that I cannot speak; for as it was out of range of these senses so it was out of range of this mind whose sole preoccupation is these senses.

I had been in terror, but in what was I now? How little to me was the human absence of light, the normal absence of sound that had frightened me.

I was nowhere, and it was real. I was nothing and I was enduring. I would have returned to my blank, dumb prison as one flies to a paradise, but I could not, for something had happened to me. I was translated; and until that experience was fulfilled I could not regain myself nor evade in any way my happenings.

Therefore, I do not know how long I remained crouched in that stony den. Nor how I lay; nor aught that happened to me. But at a point I did return to normal consciousness, and that as swiftly as though one had taken me by the shoulders and clicked me to another direction.

All that monstrous Something-Nothing ceased; and I was listening with these ears, and staring through known darkness with these eyes that see you.

There were footsteps outside the door, and in an instant the door grinced and screeched and swung.

It was those two. But I did not move from where I lay, and when I did so it was because he lifted me. Those giant arms could lift me as one plucks up a cat; and in a moment I was walking, and the arm that was yet around my waist was pressing me lovingly to his side.

"We were only playing with you," he said.

And she at my other side cooed, as she fondled my hand.

"It was only a game."

I looked wordlessly from one to the other and laughed gently.

It was strange that I did not wish to speak. It was strange still that I would not speak; and to everything that they said I returned my gentle laugh. That, it seemed to me, must be sufficient communion even for them; and who in the world could wish to speak when he might laugh?

We walked on, slowly at first, and then hastily, and sentences came from one to the other across me; sometimes explanations, at times assertions and assents.

"It took us ten minutes to get out," he said, "and we thought---- "

"For you are so much cleverer than we are," she interposed.

"That you would have been home almost as quickly as we were."

"It took us ten long minutes to imagine that although the door was closed it might not be fastened," he went on, "but when I pulled on it it opened at once.

"I was glad to see the moonlight," he continued in a tone of reverie.

"Glad!" she exclaimed.

"Those ten minutes were unpleasant," he assented.

"They were wicked," she exclaimed energetically. "They--- " she

paused and took my arm again: "They are forgotten and forgiven. Our thoughts of each other now can be all frankness and trust."

I must have been imprisoned for some hours, for when I went in there had been a bright moon in a bare sky, where now there was no moon and the heavens were deeply shadowed. Our faces were visible to each other as dull shapes, and the spaces about us were bathed in that diaphanous darkness through which one looks without seeing, and against which things loom rather than show.

A wonderful feeling of well-being flowed through me, warming and bracing me. A feeling of astonishing rest for myself, and of endless affection for my companions.

And with it all there was a sense, confused and yet strong, that I knew something which they did not know. That I had a secret which would astonish them when they discovered it.

I knew they should discover it, for I would reveal it to them myself, as soon as I became aware of what it really was. And my mind was filled with joy at the thought of how I would surprise them, and of how they should be surprised.

That strange knowledge lay like a warmth at my heart. It lit the dull night for me, so that through the gloom and mirk I walked as on air and in radiance. All that I had gone through vanished from my memory. It was as though it had never been. Nothing was any more but this new-found rest and contentment.

Happiness! I had found it at last; and it was more worth finding than anything I had yet experienced.

But the end of our walk was nigh. At a distance was the gleam of lights, and black silhouettes about them. We increased our pace, I, willingly enough, for I wished to tell them a secret; and in a short time we came to the great steps and mounted them. Men were there with torches, and we walked gaily from darkness into light.

Reaching the top, on the wide platform before the door, she turned to me with a smile, and she stopped dead. I saw the smile frozen on her face. I saw her face blanch to the whiteness of snow, and her eyes widen and fix and stare. She clasped her bosom with both hands and stood so, staring.

Then something, a self of me, detached itself from me, and stood forward and looked also.

I saw myself. My mouth was twisted sidewards in a jolly grin. My eyes were turned inwards in a comical squint, and my chin was all a sop of my own saliva.

I looked at myself so for a mortal moment, and I awakened.

From The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James, reprinted by permission of Edward Arnold & Co.

A View from a Hill

By M. R. JAMES

HOW PLEASANT IT CAN BE, ALONE IN A FIRST-CLASS RAILWAY CARRIAGE,

on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken only by a footstep crunching the gravel. Yet perhaps that is best experienced after sundown, and the traveller I have in mind was making his leisurely progress on a sunny afternoon in the latter half of June.

He was in the depths of the country. I need not particularize further than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters, he would have been found in the south-westem of them.

He was a man of academic pursuits, and his term was just over. He was on his way to meet a new friend, older than himself. The two of them had met first on an official inquiry in town, had found that they had many tastes and habits in common, liked each other, and the result was an invitation from Squire Richards to Mr. Fanshawe which was now taking effect.

The journey ended about five o'clock. Fanshawe was told by a cheerful country porter that the car from the Hall had been up to the station and left a message that something had to be fetched from half a mile farther on, and would the gentleman please to wait a few minutes till it came back? "But I see," continued the porter, "as you've got your bysticle, and very like you'd find it pleasanter to ride up to the 'All yourself. Straight up the road 'ere, and then first turn to the left—it ain't above two mile—and I'll see as your things is put in the car for you. You'll excuse me mentioning it, only I thought it were a nice evening for a ride. Yes, sir, very seasonable weather for the haymakers: let me see, I have your bike ticket. Thank you, sir; much obliged: you can't miss your road, etc., etc."

The two miles to the Hall were just what was needed, after the day in the train, to dispel somnolence and impart a wish for tea. The Hall, when sighted, also promised just what was needed in the way of a quiet resting-place after days of sitting on committees and college-meetings. It was neither excitingly old nor depressingly new. Plastered walls, sash-windows, old trees, smooth lawns, were the features which Fanshawe noticed as he came up the drive. Squire Richards, a burly man of sixty odd, was awaiting him in the porch with evident pleasure.

"Tea first," he said, "or would you like a longer drink? No? All right, tea's ready in the garden. Come along, they'll put your machine away. I always have tea under the lime-tree by the stream on a day like this."

Nor could you ask for a better place. Midsummer afternoon, shade and scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards. It was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr. Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: "Look here, it's cool enough now to think of a stroll, if you're inclined? All right: then what I suggest is that we walk up the park and get on to the hill-side, where we can look over the country. We'll have a map, and I'll show you where things are; and you can go off on your machine, or we can take the car, according as you want exercise or not. If you're ready, we can start now and be back well before eight, taking it very easy."

"I'm ready. I should like my stick, though, and have you got any field-glasses? I lent mine to a man a week ago, and he's gone off Lord knows where and taken them with him."

Mr. Richards pondered. "Yes," he said, "I have, but they're not things I use myself, and I don't know whether the ones I have will suit you. They're old-fashioned, and about twice as heavy as they make 'em now. You're welcome to have them, but I won't carry them. By the way, what do you want to drink after dinner?"

Protestations that anything would do were overruled, and a satisfactory settlement was reached on the way to the front hall, where Mr. Fanshawe found his stick, and Mr. Richards, after thoughtful pinching of his lower lip, resorted to a drawer in the hall-table, extracted a key, crossed to a cupboard in the panelling, opened it, took a box from the shelf, and put it on the table. "The glasses are in there," he said, "and there's some dodge of opening it, but I've forgotten what it is. You try." Mr. Fanshawe accordingly tried. There was no keyhole, and the box was solid, heavy and smooth: it seemed obvious that some part of it would have to be pressed before anything could happen. "The comers," said he to himself, "are the likely places; and infernally sharp comers they are too," he added, as he put his thumb in his mouth after exerting force on a lower comer.

"What's the matter?" said the Squire.

"Why, your disgusting Borgia box has scratched me, drat it," said Fanshawe. The Squire chuckled unfeelingly. "Well, you've got it open, anyway," he said.

"So I have! Well, I don't begrudge a drop of blood in a good cause, and here are the glasses. They are pretty heavy, as you said, but I think I'm equal to carrying them."

"Ready?" said the Squire. "Come on then; we go out by the garden."

So they did, and passed out into the park, which sloped decidedly upwards to the hill which, as Fanshawe had seen from the train, dominated the country. It was a spur of a larger range that lay behind. On the way, the Squire, who was great on earthworks, pointed out various spots where he detected or imagined traces of war-ditches and the like. "And here," he said, stopping on a more or less level plot with a ring of large trees, "is Baxter's Roman villa."

"Baxter?" said Mr. Fanshawe.

"I forgot; you don't know about him. He was the old chap I got those glasses from. I believe he made them. He was an old watchmaker down in the village, a great antiquary. My father gave him leave to grub about where he liked; and when he made a find he used to lend him a man or two to help him with the digging. He got a surprising lot of things together, and when he died—I dare say it's ten or fifteen years ago—I bought the whole lot and gave them to the town museum. We'll run in one of these days, and look over them. The glasses came to me with the rest, but of course I kept them. If you look at them, you'll see they're more or less amateur work—the body of them; naturally the lenses weren't his making."

"Yes, I see they are just the sort of thing that a clever workman in a different line of business might turn out. But I don't see why he made them so heavy. And did Baxter actually find a Roman villa here?"

"Yes, there's a pavement turfed over, where we're standing: it was too rough and plain to be worth taking up, but of course there are drawings of it: and the small things and pottery that turned up were quite good of their kind. An ingenious chap, old Baxter: he seemed to have a quite out-of-the-way instinct for these things. He was invaluable to our archaeologists. He used to shut up his shop for days at a time, and wander off over the district, marking down places, where he scented anything, on the ordnance map; and he kept a book with fuller notes of the places. Since his death, a good many of them have been sampled, and there's always been something to justify him."

"What a good man!" said Mr. Fanshawe.

"Good?" said the Squire, pulling up brusquely.

"I meant useful to have about the place," said Mr. Fanshawe. "But was he a villain?"

"I don't know about that either," said the Squire; "but all I can say is, if he was good, he wasn't lucky. And he wasn't liked: I didn't like him," he added, after a moment.

"Oh?" said Fanshawe interrogatively.

"No, I didn't; but that's enough about Baxter: besides, this is the stiffest bit, and I don't want to talk and walk as well."

Indeed it was hot, climbing a slippery grass slope that evening. "I told you I should take you the short way," panted the Squire, "and I wish I hadn't. However, a bath won't do us any harm when we get back. Here we are, and there's the seat."

A small clump of old Scotch firs crowned the top of the hill; and, at the edge of it, commanding the cream of the view, was a wide and solid seat, on which the two disposed themselves, and wiped their brows, and regained breath.

"Now, then," said the Squire, as soon as he was in a condition to talk connectedly, "this is where your glasses come in. But you'd better take a general look round first. My word! I've never seen the view look better."

Writing as I am now with a winter wind flapping against dark windows and a rushing, tumbling sea within a hundred yards, I find it hard to summon up the feelings and words which will put my reader in possession of the June evening and the lovely English landscape of which the Squire was speaking.

Across a broad level plain they looked upon ranges of great hills, whose uplands—some green, some furred with woods—caught the light of a sun, westering but not yet low. And all the plain was fertile, though the river which traversed it was nowhere seen. There were copses, green wheat, hedges and pasture-land: the little compact white moving cloud marked the evening train. Then the eye picked out red farms and grey houses, and nearer home scattered cottages, and then the Hall, nestled under the hill. The smoke of chimneys was very blue and straight. There was a smell of hay in the air: there were wild roses on bushes hard by. It was the acme of summer.

After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point out the leading features, the hills and valleys, and told where the towns and villages lay. "Now," he said, "with the glasses you'll be able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll."

"Yes, yes," said Fanshawe. "I've got it. What a fine tower!"

"You must have got the wrong direction," said the Squire; "there's not much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it's Old-bourne Church that you've got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower, you're easily pleased."

"Well, I do call it a fine tower," said Fanshawe, the glasses still at his eyes, "whether it's Oldboume or any other. And it must belong to a largish church; it looks to me like a central tower—four big pinnacles at the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over there. How far is it?"

"Oldboume's about nine miles, or less," said the Squire. "It's a long time since I've been there, but I don't remember thinking much of it. Now I'll show you another thing."

Fanshawe had lowered the glasses, and was still gazing in the Old-bourne direction. "No," he said, "I can't make out anything with the naked eye. What was it you were going to show me?"

"A good deal more to the left—it oughtn't to be difficult to find. Do you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it? It's in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge."

"I do," said Fanshawe, "and I believe I could tell you without much difficulty what it's called."

"Could you now?" said the Squire. "Say on."

"Why, Gallows Hill," was the answer.

"How did you guess that?"

"Well, if you don't want it guessed, you shouldn't put up a dummy gibbet and a man hanging on it."

"What's that?" said the Squire abruptly. "There's nothing on that hill but wood."

"On the contrary," said Fanshawe, "there's a largish expanse of grass on the top and your dummy gibbet in the middle; and I thought there was something on it when I looked first. But I see there's nothing—or is there? I can't be sure."

"Nonsense, nonsense, Fanshawe, there's no such thing as a dummy gibbet, or any other sort, on that hill. And it's thick wood—a fairly young plantation. I was in it myself not a year ago. Hand me the glasses, though I don't suppose I can see anything." After a pause: "No, I thought not: they won't show a thing."

Meanwhile Fanshawe was scanning the hill—it might be only two or three miles away. "Well, it's very odd," he said, "it does look exactly like a wood without the glass." He took it again. "That is one of the oddest effects. The gibbet is perfectly plain, and the grass field, and there even seem to be people on it, and carts, or a cart, with men in it. And yet when I take the glass away, there's nothing. It must- be something in the way this afternoon light falls: I shall come up earlier in the day when the sun's full on it."

"Did you say you saw people and a cart on that hill?" said the Squire incredulously. "What should they be doing there at this time of day, even if the trees have been felled? Do talk sense—look again."

"Well, I certainly thought I saw them. Yes, I should say there were a few, just clearing off. And now—by Jove, it does look like something hanging on the gibbet. But these glasses are so beastly heavy I can't hold them steady for long. Anyhow, you can take it from me there's no wood. And if you'll show me the road on the map, I'll go there to-morrow."

The Squire remained brooding for some little time. At last he rose and said, "Well, I suppose that will be the best way to settle it. And now we'd better be getting back. Bath and dinner is my idea." And on the way back he was not very communicative.

They returned through the garden, and went into the front hall to leave sticks, etc., in their due place. And here they found the aged butler Patten evidently in a state of some anxiety. "Beg pardon, Master Henry," he began at once, "but someone's been up to mischief here, I'm much afraid." He pointed to the open box which had contained the glasses.

"Nothing worse than that, Patten?" said the Squire. "Mayn't I take out my own glasses and lend them to a friend? Bought with my own money, you recollect? At old Baxter's sale, eh?"

Patten bowed, unconvinced. "Oh, very well, Master Henry, as long as you know who it was. Only I thought proper to name it, for I didn't think that box'd been off its shelf since you first put it there; and, if you'll excuse me, after what happened . . ." The voice was lowered, and the rest was not audible to Fanshawe. The Squire replied with a few words and a gruff laugh, and called on Fanshawe to come and be shown his room. And I do not think that anything else happened that night which bears on my story.

Except, perhaps, the sensation which invaded Fanshawe in the small hours that something had been let out which ought not to have been let out. It came into his dreams. He was walking in a garden which he seemed half to know, and stopped in front of a rockery made of old wrought stones, pieces of window tracery from a church, and even bits of figures. One of these moved his curiosity: it seemed to be a sculptured capital with scenes carved on it. He felt he must pull it out, and worked away, and, with an ease that surprised him, moved the stones that obscured it aside, and pulled out the block. As he did so, a tin label fell down by his feet with a little clatter. He picked it up and read on it: "On no account move this stone. Yours sincerely^ J. Patten." As often happens in dreams, he felt that this injunction was of extreme importance; and with an anxiety that amounted to anguish he looked to see if the stone had really been shifted. Indeed it had; in fact, he could not see it anywhere. The removal had disclosed the mouth of a burrow, and he bent down to look into it. Something stirred in the blackness, and then, to his intense horror, a hand emerged—a clean right hand in a neat cuff and coat-sleeve, just in the attitude of a hand that means to shake yours.

He wondered whether it would not be rude to let it alone. But, as he looked at it, it began to grow hairy and dirty and thin, and also to change its pose and stretch out as if to take hold of his leg. At that he dropped all thought of politeness, decided to run, screamed and woke himself up.

This was the dream he remembered; but it seemed to him (as, again, it often does) that there had been others of the same import before, but not so insistent. He lay awake for some little time, fixing the details of the last dream in his mind, and wondering in particular what the figures had been which he had seen or half seen on the carved capital. Something quite incongruous, he felt sure; but that was the most he could recall.

Whether because of the dream, or because it was the first day of his holiday, he did not get up very early; nor did he at once plunge into the exploration of the country. He spent a morning, half lazy, half instructive, in looking over the volumes of the County Archaeological Society's transactions, in which were many contributions from Mr. Baxter on finds of flint implements, Roman sites, ruins of monastic establishments—in fact, most departments of archaeology. They were written in an odd, pompous, only half-educated style. If the man had had more early schooling, thought Fanshawe, he would have been a very distinguished antiquary; or he might have been (he thus qualified his opinion a little later), but for a certain love of opposition and controversy, and, yes, a patronizing tone as of one possessing superior knowledge, which left an unpleasant taste. He might have been a very respectable artist. There was an imaginary restoration and elevation of a priory church which was very well conceived. A fine pinnacled central tower was a conspicuous feature of this; it reminded Fanshawe of that which he had seen from the hill, and which the Squire had told him must be Oldbourne. But it was not Oldbourne; it was Fulnaker Priory. "Oh, well," he said to himself, "I suppose Oldbourne Church may have been built by Fulnaker monks, and Baxter has copied Oldbourne tower. Anything about it in the letter-press? Ah, I see it was published after his death—found among his papers."

After lunch the Squire asked Fanshawe what he meant to do.

"Well," said Fanshawe, "I think I shall go out on my bike about four as far as Oldbourne and back by Gallows Hill. That ought to be a round of about fifteen miles, oughtn't it?"

"About that," said the Squire, "and you'll pass Lambsfield and Wanstone, both of which are worth looking at. There's a little glass at Lambsfield and the stone at Wanstone."

"Good," said Fanshawe. "I'll get tea somewhere, and may I take the glasses? I'll strap them on my bike, on the carrier."

"Of course, if you like," said the Squire. "I really ought to have some better ones. If I go into the town to-day, I'll see if I can pick up some."

"Why should you trouble to do that if you can't use them yourself?" said Fanshawe.

"Oh, I don't know; one ought to have a decent pair; and—well, old Patten doesn't think those are fit to use."

"Is he a judge?"

"He's got some tale: I don't know: something about old Baxter. I've promised to let him tell me about it. It seems very much on his mind since last night."

"Why that? Did he have a nightmare like me?"

"He had something: he was looking an old man this morning, and he said he hadn't closed an eye."

"Well, let him save up his tale till I come back."

"Very well, I will if I can. Look here, are you going to be late? If you get a puncture eight miles off and have to walk home, what then? I don't trust these bicycles: I shall tell them to give us cold things to eat."

"I shan't mind that, whether I'm late or early. But I've got things to mend punctures with. And now I'm off."

It was just as well that the Squire had made that arrangement about a cold supper, Fanshawe thought, and not for the first time, as he wheeled his bicycle up the drive about nine o'clock. So also the Squire thought and said, several times, as he met him in the hall, rather pleased at the confirmation of his want of faith in bicycles than sympathetic with his hot, weary, thirsty, and indeed haggard, friend. In fact, the kindest thing he found to say was: "You'll want a long drink to-night? Cider-cup do? All right. Hear that, Patten? Cider-cup, iced, lots of it." Then to Fanshawe, "Don't be all night over your bath."

By half-past nine they were at dinner, and Fanshawe was reporting progress, if progress it might be called.

"I got to Lambsfield very smoothly, and saw the glass. It is very interesting stuff, but there's a lot of lettering I couldn't read." "Not with glasses?" said the Squire.

"Those glasses of yours are no manner of use inside a church—or inside anywhere, I suppose, for that matter. But the only places I took 'em into were churches."

"H'm! Well, go on," said the Squire.

"However, I took some sort of a photograph of the window, and I dare say an enlargement would show what I want. Then Wanstone; I should think that stone was a very out-of-the-way thing, only I don't know about that class of antiquities. Has anybody opened the mound it stands on?"

"Baxter wanted to, but the farmer wouldn't let him."

"Oh, well, I should think it would be worth doing. Anyhow, the next thing was Fulnaker and Oldbourne. You know, it's very odd about that tower I saw from the hill. Oldbourne Church is nothing like it, and of course there's nothing over thirty feet high at Fulnaker, though you can see it had a central tower. I didn't tell you, did I? that Baxter's fancy drawing of Fulnaker shows a tower exactly like the one I saw."

"So you thought, I dare say," put in the Squire.

"No, it wasn't a case of thinking. The picture actually reminded me of what I'd seen, and I made sure it was Oldbourne, well before I looked at the title."

"Well, Baxter had a very fair idea of architecture. I dare say what's left made it easy for him to draw the right sort of tower."

"That may be it, of course, but I'm doubtful if even a professional could have got it so exactly right. There's absolutely nothing left at Fulnaker but the bases of the piers which supported it. However, that isn't the oddest thing."

"What about Gallows Hill?" said the Squire. "Here, Patten, listen to this. I told you what Mr. Fanshawe said he saw from the hill."

"Yes, Master Henry, you did; and I can't say I was so much surprised, considering."

"All right, all right. You keep that till afterwards. We want to hear what Mr. Fanshawe saw to-day. Go on, Fanshawe. You turned to come back by Ackford and Thorfield, I suppose?"

"Yes, and I looked into both the churches. Then I got to the turning which goes to the top of Gallows Hill; I saw that if I wheeled my machine over the field at the top of the hill I could join the home road on this side. It was about half-past six when I got to the top of the hill, and there was a gate on my right, where it ought to be, leading into the belt of plantation."

"You hear that, Patten? A belt, he says."

"So I thought it was—a belt. But it wasn't. You were quite right, and I was hopelessly wrong. I cannot understand it. The whole top is planted quite thick. Well, I went on into this wood, wheeling and dragging my bike, expecting every minute to come to a clearing, and then my misfortunes began. Thorns, I suppose; first I realized that the front tyre was slack, then the back. I couldn't stop to do more than try to find the punctures and mark them; but even that was hopeless. So I ploughed on, and the farther I went, the less I liked the place."

"Not much poaching in that cover, eh, Patten?" said the Squire.

"No, indeed, Master Henry: there's very few cares to go- "

"No, I know: never mind that now. Go on, Fanshawe."

"I don't blame anybody for not caring to go there. I know I had all the fancies one least likes: steps crackling over twigs behind me, indistinct people stepping behind trees in front of me, yes, and even a hand laid on my shoulder. I pulled up very sharp at that and looked round, but there really was no branch or bush that could have done it. Then, when I was just about at the middle of the plot, I was convinced that there was someone looking down on me from above—and not with any pleasant intent. I stopped again, or at least slackened my pace, to look up. And as I did, down I came, and barked my shins abominably on, what do you think? a block of stone with a big square hole in the top of it. And within a few paces there were two others just like it. The three were set in a triangle. Now, do you make out what they were put there for?"

"I think I can," said the Squire, who was now very grave and absorbed in the story. "Sit down, Patten."

It was time, for the old man was supporting himself by one hand, and leaning heavily on it. He dropped into a chair, and said in a very tremulous voice, "You didn't go between them stones, did you, sir?"

"I did not," said Fanshawe, emphatically. "I dare say I was an ass, but as soon as it dawned on me where I was, I just shouldered my machine and did my best to run. It seemed to me as if I was in an unholy evil sort of graveyard, and I was most profoundly thankful that it was one of the longest days and still sunlight. Well, I had a horrid run, even if it was only a few hundred yards. Everything caught on everything: handles and spokes and carrier and pedals—caught in them viciously, or I fancied so. I fell over at least five times. At last I saw the hedge, and I couldn't trouble to hunt for the gate."

"There is no gate on my side," the Squire interpolated.

"Just as well I didn't waste time, then. I dropped the machine over somehow and went into the road pretty near head-first; some branch or something got my ankle at the last moment. Anyhow, there I was out of the wood, and seldom more thankful or more generally sore. Then came the job of mending my punctures. I had a good outfit and I'm not at all bad at the business; but this was an absolutely hopeless case. It was seven when I got out of the wood, and I spent fifty minutes over one tyre. As fast as I found a hole and put on a patch, and blew it up, it went flat again. So I made up my mind to walk. That hill isn't three miles away, is it?"

"Not more across country, but nearer six by road."

"I thought it must be. I thought I couldn't have taken well over the hour over less than five miles, even leading a bike. Well, there's my story: where's yours and Patten's?"

"Mine? I've no story," said the Squire. "But you weren't very far out when you thought you were in a graveyard. There must be a good few of them up there, Patten, don't you think? They left 'em there when they fell to bits, I fancy."

Patten nodded, too much interested to speak. "Don't," said Fan-shawe.

"Now then, Patten," said the Squire, "you've heard what sort of a time Mr. Fanshawe's been having. What do you make of it? Anything to do with Mr. Baxter? Fill yourself a glass of port, and tell us."

"Ah, that done me good, Master Henry," said Patten, after absorbing what was before him. "If you really wish to know what were in my thoughts, my answer would be clear in the affirmative. Yes," he went on, warming to his work, "I should say as Mr. Fanshawe's experience of to-day were very largely doo to the person you named. And I think, Master Henry, as I have some title to speak, in view of me 'aving been many years on speaking terms with him, and swore in to be jury on the Coroner's inquest near this time ten years ago, you being then, if you carry your mind back, Master Henry, travelling abroad, and no one 'ere to represent the family."

"Inquest?" said Fanshawe. "An inquest on Mr. Baxter, was there?"

"Yes, sir, on—on that very person. The facts as led up to that occurrence was these. The deceased was, as you may have gathered, a very peculiar individual in 'is 'abits—in my idear, at least, but all must speak as they find. He lived very much to himself, without neither chick nor child, as the saying is. And how he passed away his time was what very few could orfer a guess at."

"He lived unknown, and few could know when Baxter ceased to be," said the Squire to his pipe.

"I beg pardon, Master Henry, I was just coming to that. But when I say how he passed away his time—to be sure we know 'ow intent he was in rummaging and ransacking out all the 'istry of the neighbourhood and the number of things he'd managed to collect together— well, it was spoke of for miles round as Baxter's Museum, and many a time when he might be in the mood, and I might have an hour to spare, have he showed me his pieces of pots and what not, going back by his account to the times of the ancient Romans. However, you know more about that than what I do, Master Henry: only what I was a-going to say was this, as know what he might and interesting as he might be in his talk, there was something about the man—well, for one thing, no one ever remember to see him in church nor yet chapel at service-time. And that made talk. Our rector he never come in the house but once. 'Never ask me what the man said'; that was all anybody could ever get out of him. Then how did he spend his nights, particularly about this season of the year? Time and again the labouring men'd meet him coming back as they went out to their work, and he'd pass 'em by without a word, looking, they says, like someone straight out of the asylum. They see the whites of his eyes all round. He'd have a fish-basket with him, that they noticed, and he always come the same road. And the talk got to be that he'd made himself some business, and that not the best kind—well, not so far from where you was at seven o'clock this evening, sir.

"Well, now, after such a night as that, Mr. Baxter he'd shut up the shop, and the old lady that did for him had orders not to come in; and knowing what she did about his language, she took care to obey them orders. But one day it so happened, about three o'clock in the afternoon, the house being shut up as I said, there come a most fearful to-do inside, and smoke out of the windows, and Baxter crying out seemingly in an agony. So the man as lived next door he run round to the back premises and burst the door in, and several others come too. Well, he tell me he never in all his life smelt such a fearful—well, odour, as what there was in that kitchen-place. It seem as if Baxter had been boiling something in a pot and overset it on his leg. There he laid on the floor, trying to keep back the cries, but it was more than he could manage, and when he seen the people come in—oh, he was in a nice condition: if his tongue warn't blistered worse than his leg it wam't his fault. Well, they picked him up, and got him into a chair, and run for the medical man, and one of 'em was going to pick up the pot, and Baxter, he screams out to let it alone. So he did, but he couldn't see as there was anything in the pot but a few old brown bones. Then they says, 'Dr. Lawrence'll be here in a minute, Mr. Baxter; he'll soon put you to rights.' And then he was off again. He must be got up to his room, he couldn't have the doctor come in there and see all that mess—they must throw a cloth over it—anything—the tablecloth out of the parlour; well, so they did. But that must have been poisonous stuff in that pot, for it was pretty near on two months afore Baxter were about agin. Beg pardon, Master Henry, was you going to say something?"

"Yes, I was," said the Squire. "I wonder you haven't told me all this before. However, I was going to say I remember old Lawrence telling me he'd attended Baxter. He was a queer card, he said. Lawrence was up in the bedroom one day, and picked up a little mask covered with black velvet, and put it on in fun and went to look at himself in the glass. He hadn't time for a proper look, for old Baxter shouted out to him from the bed: 'Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a dead man's eyes?' and it startled him so that he did put it down, and then he asked Baxter what he meant. And Baxter insisted on him handing it over, and said the man he bought it from was dead, or some such nonsense. But Lawrence felt it as he handed it over, and he declared he was sure it was made out of the front of a skull. He bought a distilling apparatus at Baxter's sale, he told me, but he could never use it: it seemed to taint everything, however much he cleaned it. But go on, Patten."

"Yes, Master Henry, I'm nearly done now, and time, too, for I don't know what they'll think about me in the servants' 'all. Well, this business of the scalding was some few years before Mr. Baxter was took, and he got about again, and went on just as he'd used. And one of the last jobs he done was finishing up them actual glasses what you took out last night. You see he'd made the body of them some long time, and got the pieces of glass for them, but there was some-think wanted to finish 'em, whatever it was, I don't know, but I picked up the frame one day, and I says: 'Mr. Baxter, why don't you make a job of this?' And he says, 'Ah, when I've done that, you'll hear news, you will: there's going to be no such pair of glasses as mine when they're filled and sealed,' and there he stopped, and I says: 'Why, Mr. Baxter, you talk as if they was wine bottles: filled and sealed—why, where's the necessity for that?' 'Did I say filled and sealed?' he says. 'Oh, well, I was suiting my conversation to my company.' Well, then come round this time of year, and one fine evening, I was passing his shop on my way home, and he was standing on the step, very pleased with hisself, and he says: 'All right and tight now: my best bit of work's finished, and I'll be out with 'em to-morrow.' 'What, finished them glasses?' I says. 'Might I have a look at them?' 'No, no,' he says, 'I've put 'em to bed for to-night, and when I do show 'em you, you'll have to pay for peepin', so I tell you.' And that, gentlemen, were the last words I heard that man say.

"That were the 17th of June, and just a week after, there was a funny thing happened, and it was doo to that as we brought in 'unsound mind' at the inquest, for barring that, no one as knew Baxter in business could anyways have laid that against him. But George Williams, as lived in the next house, and do now, he was woke up that same night with a stumbling and tumbling about in Mr. Baxter's premises, and he got out o' bed, and went to the front window on the street to see if there was any rough customers about. And it being a very light night, he could make sure as there was not. Then he stood and listened, and he hear Mr. Baxter coming down his front stair one step after another very slow, and he got the idear as it was like someone bein' pushed or pulled down and holdin' on to everythin' he could. Next thing he hear the street door come open, and out come Mr. Baxter into the street in his day-clothes, 'at and all, with his arms straight down by his sides, and talking to hisself, and shakin' his head from one side to the other, and walking in that peculiar way that he appeared to be going as it were against his own will. George Williams put up the window, and hear him say: 'O mercy, gentlemen!' and then he shut up sudden as if, he said, someone clapped his hand over his mouth, and Mr. Baxter threw his head back, and his hat fell off. And Williams see his face looking something pitiful, so as he couldn't keep from calling out to him: 'Why, Mr. Baxter, ain't you well?' and he was goin' to offer to fetch Dr. Lawrence to him, only he heard the answer: ' 'Tis best you mind your own business. Put in your head.' But whether it were Mr. Baxter said it so hoarse-like and faint, he never could be sure. Still there weren't no one but him in the street, and yet Williams was that upset by the way he spoke that he shrank back from the window and went and sat on the bed. And he heard Mr. Baxter's step go on and up the road, and after a minute or more he couldn't help but look out once more and he see him going along the same curious way as before. And one thing he recollected was that Mr. Baxter never stopped to pick up his 'at when it fell off, and yet there it was on his head. Well, Master Henry, that was the last anybody see of Mr. Baxter, leastways for a week or more. There was a lot of people said he was called off on business, or made off because he'd got into some scrape, but he was well known for miles round, and none of the railway-people nor the public-house people hadn't seen him; and then ponds was looked into and nothink found; and at last one evening Fakes the keeper come down from over the hill to the village, and he says he seen the Gallows Hill planting black with birds, and that were a funny tiling, because he never see no sign of a creature there in his time. So they looked at each other a bit, and first one says: 'I'm game to go up,' and another says: 'So am I, if you are,' and half a dozen of 'em set out in the evening time, and took Dr. Lawrence with them, and you know, Master Henry, there he was between them three stones with his neck broke."

Useless to imagine the talk which this story set going. It is not remembered. But before Patten left them, he said to Fanshawe: "Excuse me, sir, but did I understand as you took out them glasses with you to-day? I thought you did; and might I ask, did you make use of them at all?"

"Yes. Only to look at something in a church."

"Oh, indeed, you took 'em into the church, did you, sir?"

"Yes, I did; it was Lambsfield church. By the way, I left them strapped on to my bicycle, I'm afraid, in the stable-yard."

"No matter for that, sir. I can bring them in the first thing tomorrow, and perhaps you'll be so good as to look at 'em then."

Accordingly, before breakfast, after a tranquil and well-earned sleep, Fanshawe took the glasses into the garden and directed them to a distant hill. He lowered them instantly, and looked at top and bottom, worked the screws, tried them again and yet again, shrugged his shoulders and replaced them on the hall-table.

"Patten," he said, "they're absolutely useless. I can't see a thing: it's as if someone had stuck a black wafer over the lens."

"Spoilt my glasses, have you?" said the Squire. "Thank you: the only ones I've got."

"You try them yourself," said Fanshaw. "I've done nothing to them."

So after breakfast the Squire took them out to the terrace and stood on the steps. After a few ineffectual attemps, "Lord, how heavy they are!" he said impatiently, and in the same instant dropped them on to the stones, and the lens splintered and the barrel cracked: a little pool of liquid formed on the stone slab. It was inky black, and the odour that rose from it is not to be described.

"Filled and sealed, eh?" said the Squire. "If I could bring myself to touch it, I dare say we should find the seal. So that's what came of his boiling and distilling, is it? Old Ghoul!"

"What in the world do you mean?"

"Don't you see, my good man? Remember what he said to the doctor about looking through dead men's eyes? Well, this was another way of it. But they didn't like having their bones boiled, I take it, and the end of it was they carried him off whither he would not. Well, I'll get a spade, and we'll bury this thing decently."

As they smoothed the turf over it, the Squire, handing the spade to Patten, who had been a reverential spectator, remarked to Fanshawe: "It's almost a pity you took that thing into the church: you might have seen more than you did. Baxter had them for a week, I make out, but I don't see that he did much in the time."

"I'm not sure," said Fanshawe, "there is that picture of Fulnaker Priory Church."

Reprinted by permission of executor of the Estate of Sir Arthur Gonan Doyle.

The Silver Mirror

By A. CONAN DOYLE

January 3.

This affair of white and wothersfoon's accounts proves to be a gigantic task. There are twenty thick ledgers to be examined and checked. Who would be a junior partner? However, it is the first big bit of business which has been left entirely in my hands. I must justify it. But it has to be finished so that the lawyers may have the result in time for the trial. Johnson said this morning that I should have to get the last figure out before the twentieth of the month. Good Lord! Well, have at it, and if human brain and nerve can stand the strain, I'll win out at the other side. It means office-work from ten to five, and then a second sitting from about eight to one in the morning. There's drama in an accountant's life. When I find myself in the still early hours, while all the world sleeps, hunting through column after column for those missing figures which will turn a respected alderman into a felon, I understand that it is not such a prosaic profession after all.

On Monday I came on the first trace of defalcation. No heavy game hunter ever got a finer thrill when first he caught sight of the trail of his quarry. But I look at the twenty ledgers and think of the jungle through which I have to follow him before I get my kill. Hard work—but rare sport, too, in a way! I saw the fat fellow once at a City dinner, his red face glowing above a white napkin. He looked at the little pale man at the end of the table. He would have been pale too if he could have seen the task that would be mine.

January 6.

What perfect nonsense it is for doctors to prescribe rest when rest is out of the question! Asses! They might as well shout to a man who has a pack of wolves at his heels that what he wants is absolute quiet. My figures must be out by a certain date; unless they are so, I shall lose the chance of my lifetime, so how on earth am I to rest? I'll take a week or so after the trial.

Perhaps I was myself a fool to go to the doctor at all. But I get nervous and highly-strung when I sit alone at my work at night. It's not a pain—only a sort of fullness of the head with an occasional mist over the eyes. I thought perhaps some bromide, or chloral, or something of the kind might do me good. But stop work? It's absurd to ask such a thing. It's like a long distance race. You feel queer at first and your heart thumps and your lungs pant, but if you have only the pluck to keep on, you get your second wind. I'll stick to my work and wait for my second wind. If it never comes—all the same, I'll stick to my work. Two ledgers are done, and I am well on in the third. The rascal has covered his tracks well, but I pick them up for all that.

January 9.

I had not meant to go to the doctor again. And yet I have had to. "Straining my nerves, risking a complete breakdown, even endangering my sanity." That's a nice sentence to have fired off at one. Well, I'll stand the strain and I'll take the risk, and so long as I can sit in my chair and move a pen I'll follow the old sinner's slot.

By the way, I may as well set down here the queer experience which drove me this second time to the doctor. I'll keep an exact record of my symptoms and sensations, because they are interesting in themselves—"a curious psycho-physiological study," says the doctor— and also because I am perfectly certain that when I am through with them they will all seem blurred and unreal, like some queer dream betwixt sleeping and waking. So now, while they are fresh, I will just make a note of them, if only as a change of thought after the endless figures.

There's an old silver-framed mirror in my room. It was given me by a friend who had a taste for antiquities, and he, as I happen to know, picked it up at a sale and had no notion where it came from. It's a large thing—three feet across and two feet high—and it leans at the back of a side-table on my left as I write. The frame is flat, about three inches across, and very old; far too old for hall-marks or other methods of determining its age. The glass part projects, with a bevelled edge, and has the magnificent reflecting power which is only, as it seems to me, to be found in very old mirrors. There's a feeling of perspective when you look into it such as no modern glass can ever give.

The mirror is so situated that as I sit at the table I can usually see nothing in it but the reflection of the red window curtains. But a queer thing happened last night. I had been working for some hours, very much against the grain, with continual bouts of that mistiness of which I had complained. Again and again I had to stop and clear my eyes. Well, on one of these occasions I chanced to look at the mirror. It had the oddest appearance. The red curtains which should have been reflected in it were no longer there, but the glass seemed to be clouded and steamy, not on the surface, which glittered like steel, but deep down in the very grain of it. This opacity, when I stared hard at it, appeared to slowly rotate this way and that, until it was a thick white cloud swirling in heavy wreaths. So real and solid was it, and so reasonable was I, that I remember turning, with the idea that the curtains were on fire. But everything was deadly still in the room—no sound save the ticking of the clock, no movement save the slow gyration of that strange woolly cloud deep in the heart of the old mirror.

Then, as I looked, the mist, or smoke, or cloud, or whatever one may call it, seemed to coalesce and solidify at two points quite close together, and I was aware, with a thjill of interest rather than of fear, that these were two eyes looking out into the room. A vague outline of a head I could see—a woman's by the hair, but this was very shadowy. Only the eyes were quite distinct; such eyes—dark, luminous, filled with some passionate emotion, fury or horror, I could not say which. Never have I seen eyes which were so full of intense, vivid life. They were not fixed upon me, but stared out into the room.

Then as I sat erect, passed my hand over my brow, and made a strong conscious effort to pull myself together, the dim head faded into the general opacity, the mirror slowly cleared, and there were the red curtains once again.

A sceptic would say, no doubt, that I had dropped asleep over my figures, and that my experience was a dream. As a matter of fact, I was never more vividly awake in my life. I was able to argue about it even as I looked at it, and to tell myself that it was a subjective impression—a chimera of the nerves—begotten by worry and insomnia. But why this particular shape? And who is the woman, and what is the dreadful emotion which I read in those wonderful brown eyes? They come between me and my work. For the first time I have done less than the daily tally which I had marked out. Perhaps that is why I have had no abnormal sensations to-night. To-morrow I must wake up, come what may.

January 11.

All well, and good progress with my work. I wind the net, coil after coil, round that bulky body. But the last smile may remain with him if my own nerves break over it. The mirror would seem to be a sort of barometer which marks my brain pressure. Each night I have observed that it had clouded before I reached the end of my task.

Dr. Sinclair (who is, it seems, a bit of a psychologist) was so interested in my account that he came round this evening to have a look at the minor. I had observed that something was scribbled in crabbed old characters upon the metal work at the back. He examined this with a lens, but could make nothing of it. "Sane. X. Pal." was his final reading of it, but that did not bring us any further. He advised me to put it away into another room; but, after all, whatever I may see in it is, by his own account, only a symptom. It is in the cause that the danger lies. The twenty ledgers—not the silver mirror—should be packed away if I could only do it. I'm at the eighth now, so I progress.

January 13.

Perhaps it would have been wiser after all if I had packed away the mirror. I had an extraordinary experience with it last night.

And yet I find it so interesting, so fascinating, that even now I will keep it in its place. What on earth is the meaning of it all?

I suppose it was about one in the morning, and I was closing my books preparatory to staggering off to bed, when I saw her there in front of me. The stage of mistiness and development must have passed unobserved, and there she was in all her beauty and passion and distress, as clear-cut as if she were really in the flesh before me. The figure was small, but very distinct—so much so that every feature, and every detail of dress, are stamped in my memory. She is seated on the extreme left of the mirror. A sort of shadowy figure crouches down beside her—I can dimly discern that it is a man—and then behind them is cloud, in which I see figures—figures which move. It is not a mere picture upon which I look. It is a scene in life, an actual episode. She crouches and quivers. The man beside her cowers down. The vague figures make abrupt movements and gestures. All my fears were swallowed up in my interest. It was maddening to see so much and not to see more.

But I can at least describe the woman to the smallest point. She is very beautiful and quite young—not more than five-and-twenty, I should judge. Her hair is of a very rich brown, with a warm chestnut shade fining into gold at the edges. A little flat-pointed cap comes to an angle in front and is made of lace edged with pearls. The forehead is high, too high perhaps for perfect beauty; but one would not have it otherwise, as it gives a touch of power and strength to what would otherwise be a softly feminine face. The brows are most delicately curved over heavy eyelids, and then come those wonderful eyes—so large, so dark, so full of overmastering emotion, of rage and horror, contending with a pride of self-control which holds her from sheer frenzy! The cheeks are pale, the lips white with agony, the chin and throat most exquisitely rounded. The figure sits and leans forward in the chair, straining and rigid, cataleptic with horror. The dress is black velvet, a jewel gleams like a flame in the breast, and a golden crucifix smoulders in the shadow of a fold. This is the lady whose image still lives in the old silver mirror. What dire deed could it be which has left its impress there, so that now, in another age, if the spirit of a man be but worn down to it, he may be conscious of its presence?

One other detail: On the left side of the skirt of the black dress was, as I thought at first, a shapeless bunch of white ribbon. Then, as I looked more intently or as the vision defined itself more clearly, I perceived what it was. It was the hand of a man, clenched and knotted in agony, which held on with a convulsive grasp to the fold of the dress. The rest of the crouching figure was a mere vague outline, but that strenuous hand shone clear on the dark background, with a sinister suggestion of tragedy in its frantic clutch. The man is frightened—horribly frightened. That I can clearly discern. What has terrified him so? Why does he grip the woman's dress? The answer lies amongst those moving figures in the background. They have brought danger both to him and to her. The interest of the thing fascinated me. I thought no more of its relation to my own nerves. I stared and stared as if in a theatre. But I could get no further. Tire mist thinned. There were tumultuous movements in which all the figures were vaguely concerned. Then the mirror was clear once more.

The doctor says I must drop work for a day, and I can afford to do so, for I have made good progress lately. It is quite evident that the visions depend entirely upon my own nervous state, for I sat in front of the mirror for an hour to-night, with no result whatever. My soothing day has chased them away. I wonder whether I shall ever penetrate what they all mean? I examined the mirror this evening under a good light, and besides the mysterious inscription "Sane. X. Pal.," I was able to discern some signs of heraldic marks, very faintly visible upon the silver. They must be very ancient, as they are almost obliterated. So far as I could make out, they were three spear-heads, two above and one below. I will show them to the doctor when he calls to-morrow.

January 14.

Feel perfectly well again, and I intend that nothing else shall stop me until my task is finished. The doctor was shown the marks on the mirror and agreed that they were armorial bearings. He is deeply interested in all that I have told him, and cross-questioned me closely on the details. It amuses me to notice how he is torn in two by conflicting desires—the one that his patient should lose his symptoms, the other that the medium—for so he regards me—should solve this mystery of the past. He advised continued rest, but did not oppose me too violently when I declared that such a thing was out of the question until the ten remaining ledgers have been checked.

January 17.

For three nights I have had no experiences—my day of rest has bome fruit. Only a quarter of my task is left, but I must make a forced march, for the lawyers are clamouring for their material. I will give them enough and to spare. I have him fast on a hundred counts. When they realise what a slippery, cunning rascal he is, I should gain some credit from the case. False trading accounts, false balance-sheets, dividends drawn from capital, losses written down as profits, suppression of working expenses, manipulation of petty cash—it is a fine record!

January 18.

Headaches, nervous twitches, mistiness, fullness of the temples— all the premonitions of trouble, and the trouble came sure enough. And yet my real sorrow is not so much that the vision should come as that it should cease before all is revealed.

But I saw more to-night. The crouching man was as visible as the lady whose gown he clutched. He is a little swarthy fellow, with a black pointed beard. He has a loose gown of damask trimmed with fur. The prevailing tints of his dress are red. What a fright the fellow is in, to be sure! He cowers and shivers and glares back over his shoulder. There is a small knife in his other hand, but he is far too tremulous and cowed to use it. Dimly now I begin to see the figures in the background. Fierce faces, bearded and dark, shape themselves out of the mist. There is one terrible creature, a skeleton of a man, with hollow cheeks and eyes sunk in his head. He also has a knife in his hand. On the right of the woman stands a tall man, very young, with flaxen hair, his face sullen and dour. The beautiful woman looks up at him in appeal. So does the man on the ground. This youth seems to be the arbiter of their fate. The crouching man draws closer and hides himself in the woman's skirts. The tall youth bends and tries to drag her away from him. So much I saw last night before the mirror cleared. Shall I never know what it leads to and whence it comes? It is not a mere imagination, of that I am very sure.

Somewhere, some time, this scene has been acted, and this old mirror has reflected it. But when—where?

January 20.

My work draws to a close, and it is time. I feel a tenseness within my brain, a sense of intolerable strain, which warns me that something must give. I have worked myself to the limit. But to-night should be the last night. With a supreme effort i should finish the final ledger and complete the case before I rise from my chair. I will do it. I will.

Feburary 7.

I did. My God, what an experience! I hardly know if I am strong enough yet to set it down.

Let me explain in the first instance that I am writing this in Dr. Sinclair's private hospital some three weeks after the last entry in my diary. On the night of January 20 my nervous system finally gave way, and I remembered nothing afterwards until I found myself three days ago in this home of rest. And I can rest with a good conscience. My work was done before I went under. My figures are in the solicitors' hands. The hunt is over.

And now I must describe that last night. I had sworn to finish my work, and so intently did I stick to it, though my head was bursting, that I would never look up until the last column had been added. And yet it was fine self-restraint, for all the time I knew that wonderful things were happening in the mirror. Every nerve in my body told me so. If I looked up there was an end of my work. So I did not look up till all was finished. Then, when at last with throbbing temples I threw down my pen and raised my eyes, what a sight was there!

The mirror in its silver frame was like a stage, brilliantly lit, in which a drama was in progress. There was no mist now. The oppression of my nerves had wrought this amazing clarity. Every feature, every movement, was as clear-cut as in life. To think that I, a tired accountant, the most prosaic of mankind, with the account-books of a swindling bankrupt before me, should be chosen of all the human race to look upon such a scene!

It was the same scene and the same figures, but the drama had advanced a stage. The tall young man was holding the woman in his arms. She strained away from him and looked up at him with loathing in her face. They had torn the crouching man away from his hold upon the skirt of her dress. A dozen of them were round him— savage men, bearded men. They hacked at him with knives. All seemed to strike him together. Their arms rose and fell. The blood did not flow from him—it squirted. His red dress was dabbled in it. He threw himself this way and that, purple upon crimson, like an over-ripe plum. Still they hacked, and still the jets shot from him. It was horrible—horrible! They dragged him kicking to the door. The woman looked over her shoulder at him and her mouth gaped. I heard nothing, but I knew that she was screaming. And then, whether it was this nerve-racking vision before me, or whether, my task finished, all the overwork of the past weeks came in one crushing weight upon me, the room danced round me, the floor seemed to sink away beneath my feet, and I remembered no more. In the early morning my landlady found me stretched senseless before the silver mirror, but I knew nothing myself until three days ago I awoke in the deep peace of the doctor's nursing home.

February 9.

Only to-day have I told Dr. Sinclair my full experience. He had not allowed me to speak of such matters before. He listened with an absorbed interest. "You don't identify this with any well-known scene in history?" he asked, with suspicion in his eyes. I assured him that I knew nothing of history. "Have you no idea whence that mirror came and to whom it once belonged?" he continued. "Have you?" I asked, for he spoke with meaning. "It's incredible," said he, "and yet how else can one explain it? The scenes which you described before suggested it, but now it has gone beyond all range of coincidence. I will bring you some notes in the evening."

Later.

He has just left me. Let me set down his words as closely as I can recall them. He began by laying several musty volumes upon my bed.

"These you can consult at your leisure," said he. "I have some notes here which you can confirm. There is not a doubt that what you have seen is the murder of Rizzio by the Scottish nobles in the presence of Mary, which occurred in March 1566. Your description of the woman is accurate. The high forehead and heavy eyelids combined with great beauty could hardly apply to two women. The tall young man was her husband, Darnley. Rizzio, says the chronicle, 'was dressed in a loose dressing-gown of furred damask, with hose of russet velvet.' With one hand he clutched Mary's gown, with the other he held a dagger. Your fierce, hollow-eyed man was Ruthven, who was new-risen from a bed of sickness. Every detail is exact."

"But why to me?" I asked, in bewilderment. "Why of all the human race to me?"

"Because you were in the fit mental state to receive the impression. Because you chanced to own the mirror which gave the impression."

"The mirror! You think, then, that it was Mary's mirror—that it stood in the room where the deed was done?"

"I am convinced that it was Mary's mirror. She had been Queen of France. Her personal property would be stamped with the Royal arms. What you took to be three spear-heads were really the lilies of France."

"And the inscription?"

" 'Sane. X. Pal.' You can expand it into Sanctae Crucis Palatium. Someone has made a note upon the mirror as to whence it came. It was the Palace of the Holy Cross."

"Holyrood!" I cried.

"Exactly. Your mirror came from Holyrood. You have had one very singular experience, and have escaped. I trust that you will never put yourself into the way of having such another."

bethan house backed upon the Stour, a place of black beams and low ceilings and great fireplaces. It had been buttressed behind, where the ground ran down to the river bank, and hardly a window was on a level with its neighbour. A picturesque place enough, but Mr. Twiss was a lover of towns and of paved footways and illuminated streets. He imagined it on such an evening as this, dark, and the rain dripping cheerlessly from the trees. He imagined its inmate crouching over the fire with his sly smile upon his face, and of a sudden the picture took on a sinister look, and a strong sense of discomfort made Mr. Twiss cast an uneasy glance behind him. He had in his pocket a letter of instructions from Archie Cranfield, bidding him buy the house outright with its furniture, since it had now all come into the market.

It was a week after this when next Captain Brayton came to Mr. Twiss's office, and, their business done, he spoke of his own accord of Archie Cranfield.

"I am going to stay with him," he said. "He wrote to me on the night of the day when we passed him in Pall Mall. He told me that he would make up a small bachelor party. I am very glad, for, to tell the truth, our quarrel was a sufficiently serious one, and here, it seems, is the end to it."

Mr. Twiss was delighted, and shook his client warmly by the hand.

"You shall bring me news of Archie Cranfield," he said—"better news than I have," he added, with a sudden gravity upon his face. For in making the arrangements for the purchase of the house, he had come into contact with various neighbours of Archie Cranfield, and from all of them he had had but one report. Cranfield had a bad name in those parts. There were no particular facts given to account for his reputation. It was all elusive and vague, an impression conveyed by Archie Cranfield himself, by something strange and sly in his demeanour. He would sit chuckling in a sort of triumph, to which no one had the clue, or, on the other hand, he fell into deep silences like a man with a trouble on his mind.

"Be sure you come to see me when you return," said Mr. Twiss, and Captain Brayton replied heartily: "Surely I will." But he never did. For in a few days the newspapers were busy with the strange enigma of his death.

The first hint of this enigma was conveyed to Mr. Twiss late one night at his private address. It came in the shape of a telegram from

Archie Cranfield, which seemed to the agitated solicitor rather a cry of distress than a message sent across the wires.

Come at once. I am in terrible need.

Cranfield

There were no trains at so late an hour by which Mr. Twiss could reach his client; he must needs wait until the morning. He travelled, however, by the first train from Liverpool Street. Although the newspapers were set out upon the bookstall, not one of them contained a word of anything amiss at Archie Cranfield's house, and Mr. Twiss began to breathe more freely. It was too early for a cab to be in waiting at the station, and Mr. Twiss set out to walk the six miles. It was a fine, clear morning of November; but for the want of leaves and birds, and the dull look of the countryside, Mr. Twiss might have believed the season to be June. His spirits rose as he walked, his blood warmed to a comfortable glow, and by the time he came to the gates of the house, Cranfield's summons had become a trifling thing. As he walked up to the door, however, his mood changed, for every blind in the house was drawn. The door was opened before he could touch the bell, and it was opened by Cranfield himself. His face was pale and disordered, his manner that of a man at his wits' end.

"What has happened?" asked Mr. Twiss as he entered the hall.

"A terrible thing!" replied Cranfield. "It's Brayton. Have you breakfasted? I suppose not. Come, and I will tell you while you eat."

He walked up and down the room while Mr. Twiss ate his breakfast, and gradually, by question and by answer, the story took shape. Corroboration was easy and was secured. There was no real dispute about the facts; they were simple and clear.

There were two other visitors in the house besides Captain Brayton, one a barrister named Henry Chalmers, and the second, William Linfield, a man about town, as the phrase goes. Both men stood in much the same relationship to Archie Cranfield as Captain Brayton did—that is to say, they were old friends who had seen little of their host of late, and were somewhat surprised to receive his invitation after so long an interval. They had accepted it in the same spirit as Brayton, and the three men arrived together on Wednesday evening. On Thursday the party of four shot over some turnip fields and a few clumps of wood which belonged to the house, and played a game of bridge in the evening. In the opinion of all, Brayton was never in better spirits. On Friday the four men shot again and returned to the house as darkness was coming on. They took tea in the smoking room, and after tea Brayton declared his intention to write some letters before dinner. He went upstairs to his room for that purpose.

The other three men remained in the smoking room. Of that there was no doubt. Both Chalmers and Linfield were emphatic upon the point. Chalmers, in particular, said:

"We sat talking on a well-worn theme, I in a chair on one side of the fireplace, Archie Cranfield in another opposite to me, and Linfield sitting on the edge of the billiard table between us. How the subject cropped up I cannot remember, but I found myself arguing that most men hid their real selves all their lives even from their most intimate friends, that there were secret chambers in a man's consciousness wherein he lived a different life from that which the world saw and knew, and that it was only by some rare mistake the portals of that chamber were ever passed by any other man. Linfield would not hear of it. If this hidden man were the real man, he held, in some way or another the reality would triumph, and some vague suspicion of the truth would in the end be felt by all his intimates. I upheld my view by instances from the courts of law, Linfield his by the aid of a generous imagination, while Cranfield looked from one to the other of us with his sly, mocking smile. I turned to him, indeed, in some heat.

" 'Well, since you appear to know, Cranfield, tell me which of us is right,' and his pipe fell from his fingers and broke upon the hearth. He stood up, with his face grown white and his lips drawn back from his teeth in a kind of snarl.

" 'What do you mean by that?' he asked; and before I could answer, the door was thrown violently open, and Cranfield's manservant burst into the room. He mastered himself enough to say:

" 'May I speak to you, sir?'

"Cranfield went outside the door with him. He could not have moved six paces from the door, for though he closed it behind him, we heard the sound of his voice and of his servant's speaking in low tones. Moreover, there was no appreciable moment of time between the cessation of the voices and Cranfield's reappearance in the room. He came back to the fireplace and said very quietly:

" 'I have something terrible to tell you. Brayton has shot himself.'

"He then glanced from Linfield's face to mine, and sat down in a chair heavily. Then he crouched over the fire shivering. Both Linfield and myself were too shocked by the news to say a word for a moment or two. Then Linfield asked: " 'But is he dead?'

" 'Humphreys says so/ Cranfield returned. 'I have telephoned to the police and to the doctor.'

" 'But we had better go upstairs ourselves and see,' said I. And we did."

Thus Chalmers. Humphreys, the manservant, gave the following account:

"The bell rang from Captain Brayton's room at half past five. I answered it at once myself, and Captain Brayton asked me at what hour the post left. I replied that we sent the letters from the house to the post office in the village at six. He then asked me to return at that hour and fetch those of his which would be ready. I returned precisely at six, and I saw Captain Brayton lying in a heap upon the rug in front of the fire. He was dead, and he held a revolver tightly clenched in his hand. As I stepped over him, I smelt that something was burning. He had shot himself through the heart, and his clothes were singed, as if he had held the revolver close to his side."

These stories were repeated at the inquest, and at this particular point in Humphreys's evidence the coroner asked a question:

"Did you recognise the revolver?"

"Not until Captain Brayton's hand was unclenched."

"But then you did?"

"Yes," said Humphreys.

The coroner pointed to the table on which a revolver lay. "Is that the weapon?"

Humphreys took it up and looked at the handle, on which two initials were engraved—"A. C."

"Yes," said the man. "I recognised it as Mr. Cranfield's. He kept it in a drawer by his bedside."

No revolver was found amongst Captain Brayton's possessions.

It became clear that, while the three men were talking in the billiard room, Captain Brayton had gone to Cranfield's room, taken his revolver, and killed himself with it. No evidence, however, was produced which supplied a reason for Brayton's suicide. His affairs were in good order, his means sufficient, his prospects of advancement in his career sound. Nor was there a suggestion of any private unhappi-ness. The tragedy, therefore, was entered in that list of mysteries which are held insoluble.

"I might," said Chalmers, "perhaps resume the argument which Humphreys interrupted in the billiard room, with a better instance than any which I induced—the instance of Captain Brayton."

"You won't go?" Archie Cranfield pleaded with Mr. Twiss. "Lin-field and Chalmers leave to-day. If you go too, I shall be entirely alone."

"But why should you stay?" the lawyer returned. "Surely you hardly propose to remain through the winter in this house?"

"No, but I must stay on for a few days; I have to make arrangements before I can go," said Cranfield; and seeing that he was in earnest in his intention to go, Mr. Twiss was persuaded. He stayed on, and recognised, in consequence, that the death of Captain Brayton had amongst its consequences one which he had not expected. The feeling in the neighbourhood changed towards Archie Cranfield. It cannot be said that he became popular—he wore too sad and joyless an air—but sympathy was shown to him in many acts of courtesy and in a greater charity of language.

A retired admiral, of a strong political complexion, who had been one of the foremost to dislike Archie Cranfield, called, indeed, to offer his condolences. Archie Cranfield did not see him, but Mr. Twiss walked down the drive with him to the gate.

"It's hard on Cranfield," said the admiral. "We all admit it. It wasn't fair of Brayton to take his host's revolver. But for the accident that Cranfield was in the billiard room with Linfield and Chalmers, the affair might have taken on quite an ugly look. We all feel that in the neighbourhood, and we shall make it up to Cranfield. Just tell him that, Mr. Twiss, if you will."

"It is very kind of you all, I am sure," replied Mr. Twiss, "but I think Cranfield will not continue to live here. The death of Captain Brayton has been too much of a shock for him."

Mr. Twiss said "Good-bye" to the admiral at the gate, and returned to the house. He was not easy in his mind, and as he walked round the lawn under the great trees, he cried to himself:

"It is lucky, indeed, that Archie Cranfield was in the billiard room with Linfield and Chalmers; otherwise, Heaven knows what I might have been brought to believe myself."

The two men had quarrelled; Brayton himself had imparted that piece of knowledge to Mr. Twiss. Then there was the queer change in Archie Cranfield's character, which had made for him enemies of strangers, and strangers of his friends—the slyness, the love of solitude, the indifference to the world, the furtive smile as of a man conscious of secret powers, the whole indescribable uncanniness of him. Mr. Twiss marshalled his impressions and stopped in the avenue.

"I should have had no just grounds for any suspicion," he concluded, "but I cannot say that I should not have suspected," and slowly he went on to the door.

He walked through the house into the billiard room, and so became the witness of an incident which caused him an extraordinary disquiet. The room was empty. Mr. Twiss lit his pipe and took down a book from one of the shelves. A bright fire glowed upon the hearth, and drawing up a chair to the fender, he settled down to read. But the day was dull, and the fireplace stood at the dark end of the room. Mr. Twiss carried his book over to the window, which was a bay window with a broad seat. Now, the curtains were hung at the embrasure of the window, so that, when they were drawn, they shut the bay off altogether from the room, and when they were open, as now, they still concealed the comers of the window seats. It was in one of these comers that Mr. Twiss took his seat, and there he read quietly for the space of five minutes.

At the end of that time he heard the latch of the door click, arid looking out from his position behind the curtain, he saw the door slowly open. Archie Cranfield came through the doorway into the room, and shut the door behind him. Then he stood for a while by the door, very still, but breathing heavily. Mr. Twiss was on the point of coming forward and announcing his presence, but there was something so strange and secret in Cranfield's behaviour that, in spite of certain twinges of conscience, he remained hidden in his seat. He did more than remain hidden. He made a chink between the curtain and the wall, and watched. He saw Cranfield move swiftly over to the fireplace, seize a little old-fashioned clock in a case of satinwood which stood upon the mantelshelf, raise it in the air, and dash it with an ungovernable fury on to the stone hearth. Having done this unac-

MASON: THE CLOCK

countable thing, Cranfield dropped into the chair which Mr. Twiss had drawn up. He covered his face with his hands and suddenly began to sob and wail in the most dreadful fashion, rocking his body from side to side in a very paroxysm of grief. Mr. Twiss was at his wit's end to know what to do. He felt that to catch a man sobbing would be to earn his undying resentment. Yet the sound was so horrible, and produced in him so sharp a discomfort and distress, that, on the other hand, he could hardly keep still. The paroxysm passed, however, almost as quickly as it had come, and Cranfield, springing to his feet, rang the bell. Humphreys answered it.

"I have knocked the clock off the mantelshelf with my elbow, Humphreys," he said. "I am afraid that it is broken, and the glass might cut somebody's hand. Would you mind clearing the pieces away?"

He went out of the room, and Humphreys went off for a dustpan. Mr. Twiss was able to escape from the billiard room unnoticed. But it was a long time before he recovered from the uneasiness which the incident aroused in him.

Four days later the two men left the house together. The servants had been paid off. Humphreys had gone with the luggage to London by an earlier train. Mr. Twiss and Archie Cranfield were the last to go. Cranfield turned the key in the lock of the front door as they stood upon the steps.

"I shall never see the inside of that house again," he said with a gusty violence.

"Will you allow me to get rid of it for you?" asked Mr. Twiss; and for a moment Cranfield looked at him with knotted brows, blowing the while into the wards of the key.

"No," he said at length, and, running down to the stream at the back of the house, he tossed the key into the water. "No," he repeated sharply; "let the house rot empty as it stands. The rats shall have their will of it, and the sooner the better."

He walked quickly to the gate, with Mr. Twiss at his heels, and as they covered the six miles to the railway station, very little was said between them.

Time ran on, and Mr. Twiss was a busy man. The old house by the Stour began to vanish from his memory amongst the mists and the veils of rain which so often enshrouded it. Even the enigma of Captain Brayton's death was ceasing to perplex him, when the whole affair was revived in the most startling fashion. A labourer, making a short cut to his work one summer morning, passed through the grounds of Cranfield's closed and shuttered house. His way led him round the back of the building, and as he came to that corner where the great brick buttresses kept the house from slipping down into the river, he saw below him, at the edge of the water, a man sleeping. The man's back was turned towards him; he was lying half upon his side, half upon his face. The labourer, wondering who it was, went down to the river bank, and the first thing he noticed was a revolver lying upon the grass, its black barrel and handle shining in the morning sunlight. The labourer turned the sleeper over on his back. There was some blood upon the left breast of his waistcoat. The sleeper was dead, and from the rigidity of the body had been dead for some hours. The labourer ran back to the village with the astounding news that he had found Mr. Cranfield shot through the heart at the back of his own empty house. People at first jumped naturally to the belief that murder had been done. The more judicious, however, shook their heads. Not a door nor a window was open in the house. When the locks were forced, it was seen that the dust lay deep on floor and chair and table, and nowhere was there any mark of a hand or a foot. Outside the house, too, in the long neglected grass, there were but two sets of footsteps visible, one set leading round the house—the marks made by the labourer on his way to his work—the other set leading directly to the spot where Archie Cranfield's body was found lying. Rumours, each contradicting the other, flew from cottage to cottage, and the men gathered about the police station and in the street waiting for the next. In an hour or two, however, the mystery was at an end. It leaked out that upon Archie Cranfield's body a paper had been discovered, signed in his hand and by his name, with these words:

I have shot myself with the same revolver with which I murdered Captain Brayton.

The statement created some stir when it was read out in the billiard room, where the coroner held his inquest. But the coroner who presided now was the man who had held the court when Captain Brayton had been shot. He was quite clear in his recollection of that case.

"Mr. Cranfield's alibi on that occasion," he said, "was incontrovertible. Mr. Cranfield was with two friends in this very room when Captain Brayton shot himself in his bedroom. There can be no doubt of that." And under his direction the jury returned a verdict of "suicide while of unsound mind."

Mr. Twiss attended the inquest and the funeral. But though he welcomed the verdict, at the bottom of his mind he was uneasy. He remembered vividly that extraordinary moment when he had seen Cranfield creep into the billiard room, lift the little clock in its case of satinwood high above his head, and dash it down upon the hearth in a wild gust of fury. He recollected how the fury had given way to despair—if it were despair and not remorse. He saw again Archie Cranfield dropping into the chair, holding his head and rocking his body in a paroxysm of sobs. The sound of his wailing rang horribly once more in the ears of Mr. Twiss. He was not satisfied.

"What should take Cranfield back to that deserted house, there to end his life, if not remorse," he asked himself—"remorse for some evil done there?"

Over that question for some days he shook his head, finding it waiting for him at his fireside and lurking for him at the comer of the roads, as he took his daily walk between Hampstead and his office. It began to poison his life, a life of sane and customary ways, with eerie suggestions. There was an oppression upon his heart of which he could not rid it. On the outskirts of his pleasant world dim horrors loomed; he seemed to walk upon a frail crust, fearful of what lay beneath. The sly smile, the furtive triumph, the apparent consciousness of secret power—did they point to some corruption of the soul in Cranfield, of which none knew but he himself?

"At all events, he paid for it," Mr. Twiss would insist, and from that reflection drew, after all, but little comfort. The riddle began even to invade his business hours, and take a seat within his private office, silently clamouring for his attention. So that it was with a veritable relief that he heard one morning from his clerk that a man called Humphreys wished particularly to see him.

"Show him in," cried Mr. Twiss, and for his own ear he added: "Now I shall know."

Humphreys entered the room with a letter in his hand. He laid the letter on the office table. Mr. Twiss saw at a glance that it was addressed in Archie Cranfield's hand. He flung himself upon it and snatched it up. It was sealed by Cranfield's seal. It was addressed to himself, with a note upon the lefthand comer of the envelope:

To be delivered after my death.

Mr. Twiss turned sternly to the man. "Why did you not bring it before?"

"Mr. Cranfield told me to wait a month," Humphreys replied.

Mr. Twiss took a turn across the room with the letter in his hand.

"Then you knew," he cried, "that your master meant to kill himself? You knew, and remained silent?"

"No, sir, I did not know," Humphreys replied firmly. "Mr. Cranfield gave me the letter, saying that he had a long railway journey in front of him. He was smiling when he gave it me. I can remember the words with which he gave it: 'They offer you an insurance ticket at the booking office, when they sell you your travelling ticket, so there is always, I suppose, a little risk. And it is of the utmost importance to me that, in the event of my death, this should reach Mr. Twiss.' He spoke so lightly that I could not have guessed what was on his mind, nor, do I think, sir, could you."

Mr. Twiss dismissed the man and summoned his clerk. "I shall not be in to anyone this afternoon," he said. He broke the seal and drew some closely written sheets of note paper from the envelope. He spread the sheets in front of him with a trembling hand.

"Heaven knows in what spirit and with what knowledge I shall rise from my reading," he thought; and looking out of his pleasant window upon the barges swinging down the river on the tide, he was in half a mind to fling the sheets of paper into the fire. "But I shall be plagued with that question all my life," he added, and he bent his head over his desk and read.

"My dear Friend,—I am writing down for you the tacts. I am not offering any explanation, for I have none to give. You will probably rise up, after reading this letter, quite incredulous, and with the conviction in your mind that you have been reading the extravagancies of a madman. And I wish with all my heart that you could he right. But you are not. I have come to the end to-day. I am writing the last words I ever shall write, and therefore I am not likely to write a lie.

"You will remember the little manor house on the borders of Essex, for you were always opposed to my purchase of it. You were like the Biitish jury, my friend. Your conclusion was sound, but your reason for it very far from the mark. You disliked it for its isolation and the melancholy of its dripping trees, and J know not what other town-bred reasonings. I will give you a more solid cause. Picture to yourself the billiard room and how it was furnished when J first took the house —the raised settee against the wall, the deep leather chairs by the fire, the high fender, and on the mantelshelf—what?—a little old-fashioned clock in a case of satinwood. You probably never noticed it. I did from the first evenings which I passed in the house. For I spent those evenings alone, smoking my pipe by the fire. It had a queer hick. For a while it would tick almost imperceptibly, and then, without reason, quite suddenly, the noise would become loud and hollow, as though the pendulum in its swing struck against the wooden case. To anyone sitting alone for hours in the room, as I did, this tick had the queerest effect. The clock almost became endowed with human qualities. At one time it seemed to wish to attract one's attention, at another time to avoid it. For more than once, disturbed by the louder knocking, I rose and moved the clock. At once the knocking would cease, to begin again when I had settled afresh to my book, in a kind of tentative, secret way, as though it would accustom my ears to the sound, and so pass unnoticed. And often it did so pass, until one knock louder and more insistent than the rest would drag me in annoyance on to my feet once more, fn a week, however, J got used to it, and then followed the strange incident which set in motion that chain of events of which to-morrow will see the end.

"It happened that a couple of my neighbours were calling on me.
One of them you have met—Admiral Palkin, a prolix old gentleman,
with a habit of saying nothing at remarkable length. The other was a
Mr. Stiles, a country gentleman who had a thought of putting up for
that division of the county. I led these two gentlemen into the billiard
room, and composed myself to listen while the admiral monologued.
But the clock seemed to me to tick louder than ever, until, with one
sharp and almost metallic thump, the sound ceased altogether. At
exactly the same moment, Admiral Palkin stopped dead in the middle
of a sentence. It was nothing of any consequence that he was saying,
but I remember the words at which he stopped. T have often---------- ' he
said, and then he broke off, not with any abrupt start, or for any lack of woids, but just as if he had completed all that he had meant to say. I looked at him across the fireplace, but his face wore its usual expression of complacent calm. He was in no way put out. Nor did it seem that any new train of thought had flashed into his mind and diverted it. I turned my eyes from him to Mr. Stiles. Mr. Stiles seemed actually to be unaware that the admiral had stopped talking at all. Admiral Palkin, you will remember, was a person of consequence in the district, and Mr. Stiles, who would subsequently need his vote and influence and motor car, had thought fit to assume an air of great deference. From the beginning he had leaned towards the admiral, his elbow upon his knee, his chin propped upon his hand, and his head now and again nodding a thoughtful assent to the admiral's nothings. In this attitude he still remained, not surprised, not even patiently waiting for the renewal of wisdom, but simply attentive.

"Nor did I move, for I was amused. The two men looked just like a couple of wax figures in Madame Tussaud's, fixed in a stiff attitude and condemned so to remain until the building should take fire and the wax run. I sat watching them for minutes, and still neither moved nor spoke. I never saw in my life a couple of people so entirely ridiculous. I tried hard to keep my countenance—for to laugh at these great little men in my own house would not only be bad manners, but would certainly do for me in the neighbourhood—but J could not help it. I began to smile, and the smile became a laugh. Yet not a muscle on the faces of my visitors changed. Not a frown overshadowed the admiral's complacency; not a glance diverted the admiring eyes of Mr. Stiles. And then the clock began to tick again, and, to my infinite astonishment, at the very same moment the admiral continued.

" '—said to myself in my lighter moments-------- And pray, sir, at what

are you laughing?'

"Mr. Stiles turned with an angry glance towards me. Admiral Palkin had resumed his conversation, apparently unaware that there had been any interval at all. My laughter, on the other hand, had extended beyond the interval, had played an accompaniment to the words just spoken. I made my excuses as well as I could, but I recognised that they were deemed insufficient. The two gentlemen left my house with the coldest farewells you can imagine.

"The same extraordinary incident was repeated with other visitors, but I was on my guard against any injudicious merriment. Moreover, I had no longer any desire to laugh. I was too perplexed. My visitors never seemed to notice that there had been a lengthy interval or indeed any interval at all, while I, for my part, hesitated to ask them what had so completely hypnotised them.

"The next development took place when I was alone in the room. It was Eve o'clock in the afternoon. I had been out shooting a covert close to the house, and a few minutes after I had rung the bell, I remembered that I had forgotten some instructions which I had meant to give to the keeper. So I got up at once, thinking to catch him in the gun room before he went home. As I rose from my chair, the clock, which had been ticking loudly—though, as I have said, it was rather a hollow, booming sound, as though the pendulum struck the wood of the case, than a mere ticking of the clock work—ceased its noise with the abruptness to which I was growing used. I went out of the room into the hall, and I saw Humphreys with the tea tray in his hands in the hall. He was turned towards the billiard room door, but to my astonishment he was not moving. He was poised with one foot in the air, as though he had been struck, as the saying is, with a step half taken. You have seen, no doubt, instantaneous photographs of people in the act of walking. Well, Humphreys was exactly like one of those photographs. He had just the same stiff, ungainly look. I should have spoken to him, but I was anxious to catch my keeper before he went away. So I took no notice of him. I crossed the hall quickly and went out by the front door, leaving it open. The gun room was really a small building of corrugated iron, standing apart at the back of the house. I went to it and tried the door. It was locked. I called aloud: 'Martin.' Martini'

"But I received no answer. I ran round the house again, thinking that he might just have started home, but I saw no signs of him. There were some outhouses which it was his business to look after, and I visited them, opening the door of each of them and calling him by name. Then I went down the drive to the gate, thinking that I might perhaps catch a glimpse of him upon the road, but again I was disappointed. I then returned to the house, shut the front door, and there in the hall still stood Humphreys in his ridiculous attitude with the tea tray in his hands. I passed him and went back into the billiard room. He took no notice of me whatever. I looked at the clock upon the mantelshelf, and I saw that I had been away just fourteen minutes. For fourteen minutes Humphreys had been standing on one leg in the hall. It seemed as incredible as it was ludicrous. Yet there was the clock to bear me out. I sat down on my chair with my hands trembling, my mind in a maze. The strangest thought had come to me, and while I revolved it in my mind, the clock resumed its ticking, the door opened, and Humphreys appeared with the tea tray in his hand.

" 'You have been a Jong time, Humphreys' I said, and the man looked at me quickly. My voice was shaking with excitement, my face, no doubt, had a disordered look.

" 'I prepared the tea at once, sir,' he answered.

" 'It is twenty minutes by the clock since I rang the beJJ,' I said.

"Humphreys placed the tea on a small table at my side and then looked at the clock. An expression of surprise came over his face. He compared it with the dial of his own watch.

" 'The clock wants regulating, sir,' he said. T set it by the kitchen clock this morning, and it has gained fourteen minutes.'

"I whipped my own watch out of my pocket and stared at it. Humphreys was quite right; the clock upon the mantelshelf had gained fourteen minutes upon all our watches. Yes, but it had gained those fourteen minutes in a second, and that was the least part of the marvel. I myself had had the benefit of those fourteen minutes. I had snatched them, as it were, from Time itself. I had looked at my watch when I rang the bell. It had marked Eve minutes to Eve. I had remained yet another four minutes in the room before I had remembered my forgotten instructions to the keeper. I had then gone out. I had visited the gun room and tlie outhouses, J had walked to the front gate, I had returned. I had taken fourteen minutes over my search—f couJd not Jiave taken Jess—and here were tlie hands of my watcJi now still pointing towards Eve, still short of the hour. Indeed, as I replaced my watch in my pocket, the clock in the hall outside struck Eve.

" 'As you passed through the hall, Humphreys, you saw no one, I suppose,' I said.

"Humphreys raised his eyebrows with a look of perplexity. 'No, sir, I saw no one,' he returned, 'but it seemed to me that the front door banged. J think it must have been left open.'

" 'Very likely,' said I. 'That will do,' and Humphreys went out of the room.

"Imagine my feelings. Time is relative, it is a condition of our senses, it is nothing more—that we know. But its relation to me was different from its relation to others. The clock had given me fourteen minutes which it denied to all the world besides. Fourteen full minutes for me, yet they passed for others in less than the fraction of a second. And not once only had it made me this gift, but many times. The admiral's pause, unnoticed by Mr. Stiles, was now explained to me. He had not paused; he had gone straight on with his flow of talk, and Mr. Stiles had gone straight on listening. But between two of Admiral Palkins words, Time had stood still for me. Similarly, Humphreys had not poised himself upon one ridiculous leg in the hall. He had taken a step in the usual way, but while his leg was raised, fourteen minutes were given to me. I had walked through the hall, I had walked back through the hall, yet Humphreys had not seen me. He could not have seen me, for there had been no interval of time for him to use his eyes. I had gone and come quicker than any flash, for even a flash is appreciable as some fraction of a second.

"J asked you to imagine my feelings. Only with those which I first experienced would you, from your sane and comfortable outlook upon life, have any sympathy, for at the beginning I was shocked. I had more than an inclination then to dash that clock upon the hearth and deny myself its bizarre and unnatural gift. Would that I had done so! But the inclination was passed, and was succeeded by an incredible lightness of spirit. I had a gift which raised me above kings, which fanned into a flame every spark of vanity within me. I had so much more of time than any other man. I amused myself by making plans to use it, and thereupon I suffered a disappointment. For there was so little one could do in fourteen minutes, and the more I realised how little there was which I could do in my own private special stretch of time, the more I wanted to do, the more completely J wished to live in it, the more I wished to pluck power and advantage from it. Thus I began to look forward to the sudden cessation of the ticking of the clock; I began to wait for it, to live for it, and when it came, I could make no use of it. I gained fourteen minutes now and then, but I lost more and more of the hours which I shared with other men. They lost their salt for me. I became tortured with the waste of those minutes of my own. I had the power; what I wanted now was to employ it. The desire became an obsession occupying my thoughts, harassing my dreams.

"Í was in this mood when I passed Brayton and yourself one evening in Pail Mali. Í wrote to him that night, and I swear to you upon my conscience that Í had no thought in writing but to put an end to an old disagreement, and re-establish, if possible, an old friendship. Í wrote in a sudden revulsion of feeling. The waste of my days was brought home to me. Í recognised that the great gift was no more than a perpetual injury. I proposed to gather my acquaintances about me, discard my ambition for some striking illustration of my power, and take up once more the threads of customary life. Yet my determination lasted no longer than the time it took me to write the letter and run out with it to the post. I regretted its despatch even as I heard it fall to the bottom of the pillar box.

"Of my quarrel with Brayton I need not write at length. It sprang from a rancorous jealousy. We had been friends and classmates in the beginning. But as step by step he rose just a little above me, the friendship I had turned to gall and anger. J was never more than the second, he always the first. Had I been fourth or ñfth, I think I should not have minded; but there was so little to separate us in merit or advancement. Yet there was always that little, and I dreaded the moment when he should take a bound and leave me far behind. The jealousy grew to a real hatred, made still more bitter to me by the knowledge that Brayton himself was unaware of it, and need not have been troubled had he been aware.

"After I left the Army and lost sight of him, the ñame burnt low. I believed it was extinguished when Í invited him to stay with me; but he had not been an hour in the house when it blazed up within me. His success, the confidence which it had given him, his easy friendliness with strangers, the talk with him as a coming man, bit into my soul. The very sound of his footstep sickened me. I was in this mood when the clock began to boom louder and louder in the billiard room. Chalmers and Linñeld were talking. Í did not listen to them. My heart beat louder and louder within my breast, keeping pace with the clock. I knew that in a moment or two the sound would cease, and the doors of my private kingdom would be open for me to pass through. Í sat back in my chair waiting while the devilish inspiration had birth and grew strong. Here was the great chance to use the power I had—the only chance which had ever come to me. Brayton was writing letters in his room. The room was in a wing of the house. The sound of a shot would not be heard. There would be an end of his success; there would be for me such a triumphant use of my great privilege as I had never dreamed of. The clock suddenly ceased. I slipped horn the room and went upstairs. I was quite leisurely. I had time. I was back in my chair again before seven minutes had passed.

Archie Cranfield"

From The Cozy Room, by Arthur Machen, reprinted by permission of John Farquharson, London.

Opening trie Door

By ARTHUR MACHEN

The newspaper reporter, from the nature of the case, has gener-ally to deal with the commonplaces of life. He does his best to find something singular and arresting in the spectacle of the day's doings; but, in spite of himself, he is generally forced to confess that whatever there may be beneath the surface, the surface itself is dull enough.

I must allow, however, that during my ten years or so in Fleet Street, I came across some tracks that were not devoid of oddity. There was that business of Campo Tosto, for example. That never got into the papers. Campo Tosto, I must explain, was a Belgian, settled for many years in England, who had left all his property to the man who looked after him.

My news editor was struck by something odd in the brief story that appeared in the morning paper, and sent me down to make inquiries. I left the train at Reigate; and there I found that Mr. Campo Tosto had lived at a place called Burnt Green—which is a translation of his name into English—and that he shot at trespassers with a bow and arrows. I was driven to his house, and saw through a glass door some of the property which he had bequeathed to his servant: fifteenth-century triptychs, dim and rich and golden; carved statues of the saints; great spiked altar candlesticks; storied censers in tarnished silver; and much more of old church treasure. The legatee, whose name was Turk, would not let me enter; but, as a treat, he took my newspaper from my pocket and read it upside down with great accuracy and facility. I wrote this very queer story, but Fleet Street would not suffer it. I believe it struck them as too strange a thing for their sober columns.

And then there was the affair of the J.H.V.S. Syndicate, which dealt with a Cabalistic cipher, and the phenomenon, called in the Old Testament, "the Glory of the Lord," and the discovery of certain objects buried under the site of the Temple at Jerusalem; that story was left half told, and I never heard the ending of it. And I never understood the affair of the hoard of coins that a storm disclosed on the Suffolk coast near Aldeburgh. From the talk of the longshoremen, who were on the lookout amongst the dunes, it appeared that a great wave came in and washed away a slice of the sand cliff just beneath them. They saw glittering objects as the sea washed back, and retrieved what they could. I viewed the treasure—it was a collection of coins; the earliest of the twelfth century, the latest, pennies, three or four of them, of Edward VII, and a bronze medal of Charles Spurgeon. There are, of course, explanations of the puzzle; but there are difficulties in the way of accepting any one of them. It is very clear, for example, that the hoard was not gathered by a collector of coins; neither the twentieth-century pennies nor the medal of the great Baptist preacher would appeal to a numismatologist.

But perhaps the queerest story to which my newspaper connections introduced me was the affair of the Reverend Secretan Jones, the "Canonbury Clergyman," as the headlines called him.

To begin with, it was a matter of sudden disappearance. I believe people of all sorts disappear by dozens in the course of every year, and nobody hears of them or their vanishings. Perhaps they turn up again, or perhaps they don't; anyhow, they never get so much as a line in the papers, and there is an end of it. Take, for example, that unknown man in the burning car, who cost the amorous commercial traveller his life. In a certain sense, we all heard of him; but he must have disappeared from somewhere in space, and nobody knew that he had gone from his world. So it is often; but now and then there is some circumstance that draws attention to the fact that A. or B. was in his place on Monday and missing from it on Tuesday and Wednesday; and then inquiries are made and usually the lost man is found, alive or dead, and the explanation is often simple enough.

MACHEN: OPENING THE DOOR

But as to the case of Secretan Jones. This gentleman, a cleric as I have said, but seldom, it appeared, exercising his sacred office, lived retired in a misty, 1830-40 square in the recesses of Canonbury. He was understood to be engaged in some kind of scholarly research, and was a well-known figure in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and looked anything between fifty and sixty. It seems probable that if he had been content with that achievement he might have disappeared as often as he pleased, and nobody would have troubled; but one night as he sat late over his books in the stillness of that retired quarter, a motor-lorry passed along a road not far from Tollit Square, breaking the silence with a heavy rumble and causing a tremor of the ground that penetrated into Secretan Jones's study. A teacup and saucer on a side-table trembled slightly, and Secretan Jones's attention was taken from his authorities and note-books.

This was in February or March of 1907, and the motor industry was still in its early stages. If you preferred a horse-bus, there were plenty left in the streets. Motor coaches were non-existent, hansom cabs still jogged and jingled on their cheerful way; and there were very few heavy motor-vans in use. But to Secretan Jones, disturbed by the rattle of his cup and saucer, a vision of the future, highly coloured, was vouchsafed, and he began to write to the papers. He saw the London streets almost as we know them to-day; streets where a horse-vehicle would be almost a matter to show one's children for them to remember in their old age; streets in which a great procession of huge omnibuses carrying fifty, seventy, a hundred people was continually passing; streets in which vans and trailers loaded far beyond the capacity of any manageable team of horses would make the ground tremble without ceasing.

The retired scholar, with the happy activity which does sometimes, oddly enough, distinguish the fish out of water, went on and spared nothing. Newton saw the apple fall, and built up a mathematical universe; Jones heard the teacup rattle, and laid the universe of London in ruins. He pointed out that neither the roadways nor the houses beside them were constructed to withstand the weight and vibration of the coming traffic. He crumbled all the shops in Oxford Street and Piccadilly into dust; he cracked the dome of St. Paul's, brought down Westminster Abbey, reduced the Law Courts to a fine powder. What was left was dealt with by fire, flood and pestilence. The prophetic

Jones demonstrated that the roads must collapse, involving the various services beneath them. Here, the water-mains and the main drainage would flood the streets; there, huge volumes of gas would escape, and electric wires fuse; the earth would be rent with explosions, and the myriad streets of London would go up in a great flame of fire. Nobody really believed that it would happen, but it made good reading, and Secretan Jones gave interviews, started discussions, and enjoyed himself thoroughly. Thus he became the "Canonbury Clergyman." "Can-onbury Clergyman says that Catastrophe is Inevitable"; "Doom of London pronounced by Canonbury Clergyman"; "Canonbury Clergyman's Forecast: London a Carnival of Flood, Fire and Earthquake"— that sort of thing.

And thus Secretan Jones, though his main interests were liturgical, was able to secure a few newspaper paragraphs when he disappeared— rather more than a year after his great campaign in the Press, which was not quite forgotten, but not very clearly remembered.

A few paragraphs, I said, and stowed away, most of them, in out-of-the-way corners of the papers. It seemed that Mrs. Sedger, the woman who shared with her husband the business of looking after Secretan Jones, brought in tea on a tray to his study at four o'clock as usual, and came, again as usual, to take it away at five. And, a good deal to her astonishment, the study was empty. She concluded that her master had gone out for a stroll, though he never went out for strolls between tea and dinner. He didn't come back for dinner; and Sedger, inspecting the hall, pointed out that the master's hats and coats and sticks and umbrellas were all on their pegs and in their places. The Sedgers conjectured this, that, and the other, waited a week, and then went to the police, and the story came out and perturbed a few learned friends and correspondents: Prebendary Lincoln, author of The Roman Canon in the Third Century; Dr. Brightwell, wise on the Rite of Malabar; and Stokes, the Mozarabic man. The rest of the populace did not take very much interest in the affair, and when, at the end of six weeks, there was a line or two stating that "the Rev. Secretan Jones, whose disappearance at the beginning of last month from his house in Tollit Square, Canonbury, caused some anxiety to his friends, returned yesterday," there was neither enthusiasm nor curiosity. The last line of the paragraph said that the incident was supposed

Trie Curious Case

of Benjamin Button

By F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

As long ago as i860 it was the proper thing to be born at

home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer of i860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing history I am about to set down will never be known.

I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself.

The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy. This was their first experience with the charming old custom of having babies—Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, at which institution Mr. Button himself had been known for four years by the somewhat obvious nickname of "Cuff."

On the September morning consecrated to the enormous event he arose nervously at six o'clock, dressed himself, adjusted an impeccable stock, and hurried forth through the streets of Baltimore to the hospital, to determine whether the darkness of the night had borne in new life upon its bosom.

When he was approximately a hundred yards from the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene, the family physician, descending the front steps, rubbing his hands together with a washing movement—as all doctors are required to do by the unwritten ethics of their profession.

Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, began to run toward Doctor Keene with much less dignity than was expected from a Southern gentleman of that picturesque period. "Doctor Keene!" he called. "Oh, Doctor Keene!"

The doctor heard him, faced around, and stood waiting, a curious expression settling on his harsh, medicinal face as Mr. Button drew near.

"What happened?" demanded Mr. Button, as he came up in a
gasping rush. "What was it? How is she? A boy? Who is it?
What------ "

"Talk sense!" said Doctor Keene sharply. He appeared somewhat irritated.

"Is the child born?" begged Mr. Button.

Doctor Keene frowned. "Why, yes, I suppose so—after a fashion." Again he threw a curious glance at Mr. Button. "Is my wife all right?" "Yes."

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Here now!" cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion of irritation, "I'll ask you to go and see for yourself. Outrageous!" He snapped the last word out in almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering: "Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation? One more would ruin me—ruin anybody."

"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Button, appalled. "Triplets?"

"No, not triplets!" answered the doctor cuttingly. "What's more, you can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor. I brought you into the world, young man, and I've been physician to your family for forty years, but I'm through with you! I don't want to see you or any of your relatives ever again! Good-by!"

Then he turned sharply, and without another word climbed into his phaeton, which was waiting at the curbstone, and drove severely away.

Mr. Button stood there upon the sidewalk, stupefied and trembling from head to foot. What horrible mishap had occurred? He had suddenly lost all desire to go into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen—it was with the greatest difficulty that, a moment later, he forced himself to mount the steps and enter the front door.

A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque gloom of the hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button approached her. "Good morning," she remarked, looking at him pleasantly. "Good morning. I—I am Mr. Button."

At this a look of utter terror spread itself over the girl's face. She rose to her feet and seemed about to fly from the hall, restraining herself only with the most apparent difficulty.

"I want to see my child," said Mr. Button.

The nurse gave a little scream. "Oh—of course!" she cried hysterically. "Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go—up.'"

She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button, bathed in a cool
perspiration, turned falteringly, and began to mount to the second
floor. In the upper hall he addressed another nurse who approached
him, basin in hand. "I'm Mr. Button," he managed to articulate.
"I want to see my------ "

Clank! The basin clattered to the floor and rolled in the direction of the stairs. Clank! Clank! It began a methodical descent as if sharing in the general terror which this gentleman provoked.

"I want to see my child!" Mr. Button almost shrieked. He was on the verge of collapse.

Clank! The basin had reached the first floor. The nurse regained control of herself, and threw Mr. Button a look of hearty contempt.

"All right, Mr. Button," she agreed in a hushed voice. "Very well.'
But if you knew what state it's put us all in this morning! It's perfectly
outrageous! The hospital will never have the ghost of a reputation
after----- "

"Hurry!" he cried hoarsely, "I can't stand this!" "Come this way, then, Mr. Button."

He dragged himself after her. At the end of a long hall they reached a room from which proceeded a variety of howls—indeed, a room which, in later parlance, would have been known as the "crying-room." They entered. Ranged around the walls were half a dozen white-enameled rolling cribs, each with a tag tied at the head.

"Well," gasped Mr. Button, "which is mine?"

"There!" said the nurse.

Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partially crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.

"Am I mad?" thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into rage. "Is this some ghastly hospital joke?"

"It doesn't seem like a joke to us," replied the nurse severely. "And I don't know whether you're mad or not—but that is most certainly your child."

The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button's forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake—he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten—a baby of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib in which it was reposing.

The old man looked placidly from one to the other for a moment, and then suddenly spoke in a cracked and ancient voice. "Are you my father?" he demanded.

Mr. Button and the nurse started violently.

"Because if you are," went on the old man querulously, "I wish you'd get me out of this place—or, at least, get them to put a comfortable rocker in here."

"Where in God's name did you come from? Who are you?" burst out Mr. Button frantically.

"I can't tell you exactly who I am," replied the querulous whine, "because I've only been bom a few hours—but my last name is certainly Button."

"You lie! You're an impostor!"

The old man turned wearily to the nurse. "Nice way to welcome a newborn child," he complained in a weak voice. "Tell him he's wrong, why don't you?"

"You're wrong, Mr. Button," said the nurse severely. "This is your child, and you'll have to make the best of it. We're going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as possible—some time today."

"Home?" repeated Mr. Button incredulously.

"Yes, we can't have him here. We really can't, you know."

"I'm glad of it," whined the old man. "This is a fine place to keep a youngster of quiet tastes. With all this yelling and howling, I haven't been able to get a wink of sleep. I asked for something to eat"—here his voice rose to a shrill note of protest—"and they brought me a bottle of milk!"

Mr. Button sank down upon a chair near his son and concealed his face in his hands. "My heavens!" he murmured, in an ecstasy of horror. "What will people say? What must I do?"

"You'll have to take him home," insisted the nurse—"immediately!"

A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful clarity before the eyes of the tortured man—a picture of himself walking through the crowded streets of the city with this appalling apparition stalking by his side. "I can't. I can't," he moaned.

People would stop to speak to him, and what was he going to say? He would have to introduce this—this septuagenarian: "This is my son, born early this morning." And then the old man would gather his blanket around him and they would plod on, past the bustling stores, the slave market—for a dark instant Mr. Button wished passionately that his son was black—past the luxurious houses of the residential district, past the home for the aged. . . .

"Come! Pull yourself together," commanded the nurse.

"See here," the old man announced suddenly, "if you think I'm going to walk home in this blanket, you're entirely mistaken."

"Babies always have blankets."

With a malicious crackle the old man held up a small white swaddling garment. "Look!" he quavered. "This is what they had ready for me."

"Babies always wear those," said the nurse primly.

"Well," said the old man, "this baby's not going to wear anything in about two minutes. This blanket itches. They might at least have given me a sheet."

"Keep it on! Keep it on!" said Mr. Button hurriedly. He turned to the nurse. "What'll I do?"

"Go downtown and buy your son some clothes."

Mr. Button's son's voice followed him down into the hall: "And a cane, father. I want to have a cane."

Mr. Button banged the outer door savagely. . . .

"Good morning," Mr. Button said, nervously, to the clerk in the Chesapeake Dry Goods Company. "I want to buy some clothes for my child."

"How old is your child, sir?"

"About six hours," answered Mr. Button, without due consideration.

"Babies' supply department in the rear."

"Why, I don't think—I'm not sure that's what I want. It's—he's an unusually large-size child. Exceptionally—ah—large." "They have the largest child's sizes."

"Where's the boys' department?" inquired Mr. Button, shifting his ground desperately. He felt that the clerk must surely scent his shameful secret.

"Right here."

"Well------ " He hesitated. The notion of dressing his son in men's

clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only find a very large boy's suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain something of his own self-respect—not to mention his position in Baltimore society.

But a frantic inspection of the boys' department revealed no suits to fit the newborn Button. He blamed the store, of course— in such cases it is the thing to blame the store.

"How old did you say that boy of yours was?" demanded the clerk curiously.

"He's—sixteen."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, I thought you said six hours. You'll find the youths' department in the next aisle."

Mr. Button turned miserably away. Then he stopped, brightened, and pointed his finger toward a dressed dummy in the window display. "There!" he exclaimed. "I'll take that suit, out there on the dummy."

The clerk stared. "Why," he protested, "that's not a child's suit. At least it is, but it's for fancy dress. You could wear it yourself!"

"Wrap it up," insisted his customer nervously. "That's what I want."

The astonished clerk obeyed.

Back at the hospital Mr. Button entered the nursery and almost threw the package at his son. "Here's your clothes," he snapped out.

The old man untied the package and viewed the contents with a quizzical eye.

"They look sort of funny to me," he complained. "I don't want
to be made a monkey of--- "

"You've made a monkey of me!" retorted Mr. Button fiercely. "Never you mind how funny you look. Put them on—or I'll—or I'll spank you." He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling nevertheless that it was the proper thing to say.

"All right, father"—this with a grotesque simulation of filial respect—"you've lived longer; you know best. Just as you say."

As before, the sound of the word "father" caused Mr. Button to start violently.

"And hurry."

"I'm hurrying, father."

When his son was dressed Mr. Button regarded him with depression. The costume consisted of dotted socks, pink pants, and a belted blouse with a wide white collar. Over the latter waved the long whitish beard, drooping almost to the waist. The effect was not good.

"Wait!"

Mr. Button seized a hospital shears and with three quick snaps amputated a large section of the beard. But even with this improvement the ensemble fell far short of perfection. The remaining brush of scraggly hair, the watery eyes, the ancient teeth, seemed oddly out of tone with the gayety of the costume. Mr. Button, however, was obdurate—he held out his hand. "Come along!" he said sternly.

His son took the hand trustingly. "What are you going to call me, dad?" he quavered as they walked from the nursery—"just 'baby' for a while? till you think of a better name?"

Mr. Button grunted. "I don't know," he answered harshly. "I think we'll call you Methuselah."

3 £»*

Even after the new addition to the Button family had had his hair cut short and then dyed to a sparse unnatural black, had had his face shaved so close that it glistened, and had been attired in small-boy clothes made to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for Mr. Button to ignore the fact that his son was a poor excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button—for it was by this name they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah—was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes underneath were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby nurse who had been engaged in advance left the house after one look, in a state of considerable indignation.

But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared that if Benjamin didn't like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that he should "play with it," whereupon the old man took it with a weary expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals throughout the day.

There can be no doubt, though, that the rattle bored him, and that he found other and more soothing amusements when he was left alone. For instance, Mr. Button discovered one day that during the preceding week he had smoked more cigars than ever before— a phenomenon which was explained a few days later when, entering the nursery unexpectedly, he found the room full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty expression on his face, trying to conceal the butt of a dark Havana. This, of course, called for a severe spanking, but Mr. Button found that he could not bring himself to administer it. He merely warned his son that he would "stunt his growth."

Nevertheless he persisted in his attitude. He brought home lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion which he was creating—for himself at least—he passionately demanded of the clerk in the toy store whether "the paint would come off the pink duck if the baby put it in his mouth." But, despite all his father's efforts, Benjamin refused to be interested. He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," over which he would pore through an afternoon, while his cotton cows and his Noah's ark were left neglected on the floor. Against such a stubbornness Mr. Button's efforts were of little avail.

The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite racked their brains for compliments to give to the parents—and finally hit upon the ingenious device of declaring that the baby resembled his grandfather, a fact which, due to the standard state of decay common to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's grandfather was furiously insulted.

Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he found it. Several small boys were brought to see him, and he spent a stiff-jointed afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops and marbles—he even managed, quite accidentally, to break a kitchen window with a stone from a slingshot, a feat which secretly delighted his father.

Thereafter Benjamin contrived to break something every day, but he did these things only because they were expected of him, and because he was by nature obliging.

When his grandfather's initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another's company. They would sit for hours, these two so far apart in age and experience, and, like old cronies, discuss with tireless monotony the slow events of the day. Benjamin felt more at ease in his grandfather's presence than in his parents'—they seemed always somewhat in awe of him and, despite the dictatorial authority they exercised over him, frequently addressed him as "Mr."

He was as puzzled as anyone else at the apparently advanced age of his mind and body at birth. He read up on it in the medical journal, but found that no such case had been previously recorded. At his father's urging he made an honest attempt to play with other boys, and frequently he joined in the milder games—football shook him up too much, and he feared that in case of a fracture his ancient bones would refuse to knit.

When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where he was initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, of weaving colored maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard necklaces. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit which both irritated and frightened his young teacher. To his relief she complained to his parents, and he was removed from the school. The Roger Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.

By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no longer felt that he was different from any other child—except when some curious anomaly reminded them of the fact. But one day a few weeks after his twelfth birthday, while looking in the mirror, Benjamin made, or thought he made, an astonishing discovery. Did his eyes deceive him, or had his hair turned in the dozen years of his life from white to iron-gray under its concealing dye? Was the network of wrinkles on his face becoming less pronounced? Was his skin healthier and firmer, with even a touch of ruddy winter color? He could not tell. He knew that he no longer stooped and that his physical condition had improved since the early days of his life.

"Can it be------ ?" he thought to himself, or rather, scarcely dared

to think.

He went to his father. "I am grown," he announced determinedly. "I want to put on long trousers."

His father hesitated. "Well," he said finally, "I don't know. Fourteen is the age for putting on long trousers—and you are only twelve."

"But you'll have to admit," protested Benjamin, "that I'm big for my age."

His father looked at him with illusory speculation. "Oh, I'm not so sure of that," he said. "I was as big as you, when I was twelve."

This was not true—it was all part of Roger Button's silent agreement with himself to believe in his son's normality.

Finally a compromise was reached. Benjamin was to continue to dye his hair. He was to make a better attempt to play with boys of his own age. He was not to wear his spectacles or carry a cane in the street. In return for these concessions he was allowed his first suit of long trousers. . . .

Of the life of Benjamin Button between his twelfth and twenty-first year I intend to say little. Suffice to record that they were years of normal ungrowth. When Benjamin was eighteen he was erect as a man of fifty; he had more hair and it was of a dark gray; his step was firm, his voice had lost its cracked quaver and descended to a healthy baritone. So his father sent him up to Connecticut to take examinations for entrance to Yale College. Benjamin passed his examination and became a member of the freshman class.

On the third day following his matriculation he received a notification from Mr. Hart, the college registrar, to call at his office and arrange his schedule. Benjamin, glancing in the mirror, decided that his hair needed a new application of its brown dye, but an anxious inspection of his bureau drawer disclosed that the dye bottle was not there. Then he remembered—he had emptied it the day before and thrown it away.

He was in a dilemma. He was due at the registrar's in five minutes. There seemed to be no help for it—he must go as he was. He did.

"Good morning," said the registrar politely. "You've come to inquire about your son."

"Why, as a matter of fact, my name's Button--- " began Benjamin,

but Mr. Hart cut him off.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Button. I'm expecting your son here any minute."

"That's me!" burst out Benjamin. "I'm a freshman."

"What!"

"I'm a freshman." "Surely you're joking." "Not at all."

The registrar frowned and glanced at a card before him. "Why, I have Mr. Benjamin Button's age down here as eighteen."

"That's my age," asserted Benjamin, flushing slightly.

The registrar eyed him wearily. "Now surely, Mr. Button, you don't expect me to believe that."

Benjamin smiled wearily. "I am eighteen," he repeated.

The registrar pointed sternly to the door. "Get out," he said. "Get out of college and get out of town. You are a dangerous lunatic."

"I am eighteen."

Mr. Hart opened the door. "The idea!" he shouted. "A man of your age trying to enter here as a freshman. Eighteen years old, are you? Well, I'll give you eighteen minutes to get out of town."

Benjamin walked with dignity from the room, and half a dozen undergraduates, who were waiting in the hall, followed him curiously with their eyes. When he had gone a little way he turned around, faced the infuriated registrar, who was still standing in the doorway, and repeated in a firm voice: "I am eighteen years old."

To a chorus of titters which went up from the group of undergraduates, Benjamin walked away.

But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his melancholy walk to the railroad station he found that he was being followed by a group, then by a swarm, and finally by a dense mass of undergraduates. The word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance examinations for Yale and attempted to palm himself off as a youth of eighteen. A fever of excitement permeated the college. Men ran hatless out of classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined the mob, professors' wives, with bonnets awry and bustles out of position, ran shouting after the procession, from which proceeded a continual succession of remarks aimed at the tender sensibilities of Benjamin Button.

"He must be the Wandering Jew!"

"He ought to go to prep school at his age!"

"Look at the infant prodigy!"

"He thought this was the old men's home."

"Go up to Harvard!"

Benjamin increased his gait, and soon he was running. He would show them! He would go to Harvard, and then they would regret these ill-considered taunts!

Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his head from the window. "You'll regret this!" he shouted.

"Ha-ha!" the undergraduates laughed. "Ha-ha-ha!" It was the biggest mistake that Yale College had ever made. . . .

In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he signalized his birthday by going to work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was in that same year that he began "going out socially"—that is, his father insisted on taking him to several fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and he and his son were more and more companionable—in fact, since Benjamin had ceased to dye his hair (which was still grayish) they appeared about the same age, and could have passed for brothers.

One night in August they got into the phaeton attired in their full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins' country house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a gorgeous evening. A full moon drenched the road to the lustreless color of platinum, and late-blooming harvest flowers breathed into the motionless air aromas that were like low, half-heard laughter. The open country, carpeted for rods around with bright wheat, was translucent as in the day. It was almost impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty of the sky— almost.

"There's a great future in the dry-goods business," Roger Button was saying. He was not a spiritual man—his esthetic sense was rudimentary.

"Old fellows like me can't learn new tricks," he observed profoundly. "It's you youngsters with energy and vitality that have the great future before you."

Far up the road the lights of the Shevlins' country house drifted into view, and presently there was a sighing sound that crept persistently toward them—it might have been the fine plaint of violins or the rustle of the silver wheat under the moon.

They pulled up behind a handsome brougham whose passengers were disembarking at the door. A lady got out, then an elderly gentleman, then another young lady, beautiful as sin. Benjamin started; an almost chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose the very elements of his body. A rigor passed over him, blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love.

The girl was slender and frail, with hair that was ashen under the moon and honey-colored under the sputtering gas lamps of the porch. Over her shoulders was thrown a Spanish mantilla of softest yellow, butterflied in black; her feet were glittering buttons at the hem of her bustled dress.

Roger Button leaned over to his son. "That," he said, "is young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of General Moncrief."

Benjamin nodded coldly. "Pretty little thing," he said indifferently. But when the negro boy had led the buggy away, he added: "Dad, you might introduce me to her."

They approached a group of which Miss Moncrief was the centre. Reared in the old tradition, she curtsied low before Benjamin. Yes, he might have a dance. He thanked her and walked away—staggered away.

The interval until the time for his turn should arrive dragged itself out interminably. He stood close to the wall, silent, inscrutable, watching with murderous eyes the young bloods of Baltimore as they eddied around Hildegarde Moncrief, passionate admiration in their faces. How obnoxious they seemed to Benjamin; how intolerably rosy! Their curling brown whiskers aroused in him a feeling equivalent to indigestion.

But when his own time came, and he drifted with her out upon the changing floor to the music of the latest waltz from Paris, his jealousies and anxieties melted from him like a mantle of snow. Blind with enchantment, he felt that life was just beginning.

"You and your brother got here just as we did, didn't you?" asked Hildegarde, looking up at him with eyes that were like bright blue enamel.

Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father's brother, would it be best to enlighten her? He remembered his experience at Yale, so he decided against it. It would be rude to contradict a lady; it would be criminal to mar this exquisite occasion with the grotesque story of his origin. Later, perhaps. So he nodded, smiled, listened, was happy.

"I like men of your age," Hildegarde told him. "Young boys are so idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, and how much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to appreciate women."

Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal—with an effort he choked back the impulse.

"You're just the romantic age," she continued—"fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly-wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is—oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty."

Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed passionately to be fifty.

"I've always said," went on Hildegarde, "that I'd rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than marry a man of thirty and take care of him."

For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed in a honey-colored mist. Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they discovered that they were marvellously in accord on all the questions of the day. She was to go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then they would discuss all these questions further.

Going home in the phaeton just before the crack of dawn, when the first bees were humming and the fading moon glimmered in the cool dew, Benjamin knew vaguely that his father was discussing wholesale hardware.

". . . And what do you think should merit our biggest attention after hammers and nails?" the elder Button was saying.

"Love," replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.

"Lugs?" exclaimed Roger Button. "Why, I've just covered the question of lugs."

Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes just as the eastern sky was suddenly cracked with light, and an oriole yawned piercingly in the quickening trees. . . .

When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde Mon-crief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say "made known," for General Moncrief declared he would rather fall upon his sword than announce it), the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish pitch. The almost forgotten story of Benjamin's birth was remembered and sent out upon the winds of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was said that Benjamin was really tire father of Roger Button, that he was his brother who had been in prison for forty years, that he was John Wilkes Booth in disguise—and, finally, that he had two small conical horns sprouting from his head.

The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the case with fascinating sketches which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish, to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. He became known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as is usually the case, had a very small circulation.

However, everyone agreed with General Moncrief that it was "criminal" for a lovely girl who could have married any beau in Baltimore to throw herself into the arms of a man who was assuredly fifty. In vain Mr. Roger Button published his son's birth certificate in large type in the Baltimore Blaze. No one believed it. You had only to look at Benjamin and see.

On the part of the two people most concerned there was no wavering. So many of the stories about her fiance were false that Hildegarde refused stubbornly to believe even the true one. In vain General Moncrief pointed out to her the high mortality among men of fifty—or, at least, among men who looked fifty; in vain he told her of the instability of the wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosen to marry for mellowness—and marry she did. . . .

7 §•»

In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde Moncrief were mistaken. The wholesale hardware business prospered amazingly. In the fifteen years between Benjamin Button's marriage in 1880 and his. father's retirement in 1895, the family fortune was doubled—and this was due largely to the younger member of the firm.

Needless to say, Baltimore eventually received the couple to its, bosom. Even old General Moncrief became reconciled to his son-inlaw when Benjamin gave him the money to bring out his "History of the Civil War" in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nine prominent publishers.

In Benjamin himself fifteen years had wrought many changes. It seemed to him that the blood flowed with new vigor through his veins. It began to be a pleasure to rise in the morning, to walk with an active step along the busy, sunny street, to work untiringly with his shipments of hammers and his cargoes of nails. It was in 1890 that he executed his famous business coup: he brought up the suggestion that all nails used in nailing up the boxes in which nails are shipped are the property of the shippee, a proposal which became a statute, was approved by Chief Justice Fossile, and saved Roger Button and Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than six hundred nails every year.

In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and more attracted by the gay side of life. It was typical of his growing enthusiasm for pleasure that he was the first man in the city of Baltimore to own and run an automobile. Meeting him on the street, his contemporaries would stare enviously at the picture he made of health and vitality.

"He seems to grow younger every year," they would remark. And if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give a proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what amounted to adulation.

And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well to pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button: his wife had ceased to attract him.

At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshiped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery—moreover, and most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it had been she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners— now conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end.

Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 his home had for him so little charm that he decided to join the army. With his business influence he obtained a commission as captain, and proved so adaptable to the work that he was made a major, and finally a lieutenant-colonel just in time to participate in the celebrated chaTge up San Juan Hill. He was slightly wounded, and received a medal.

Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and excitement of army life that he regretted to give it up, but his business required attention, so he resigned his commission and came home. He was met at the station by a brass band and escorted to his house.

Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on the porch, and even as he kissed her he felt with a sinking of the heart that these three years had taken their toll. She was a woman of forty now, with a faint skirmish line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressed him.

Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar mirror—he went closer and examined his own face with anxiety, comparing it after a moment with a photograph of himself in uniform taken just before the war.

"Good Lord!" he said aloud. The process was continuing. There was no doubt of it—he looked now like a man of thirty. Instead of being delighted, he was uneasy—he was growing younger. He had hitherto hoped that once he reached a bodily age equivalent to his age in years, the grotesque phenomenon which had marked his birth would cease to function. He shuddered. His destiny seemed to him awful, incredible.

When he came downstairs Hildegarde was waiting for him. She appeared annoyed, and he wondered if she had at last discovered that there was something amiss. It was with an effort to relieve the tension between them that he broached the matter at dinner in what he considered a delicate way.

"Well," he remarked lightly, "everybody says I look younger than ever."

Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed. "Do you think it's anything to boast about?"

"I'm not boasting," he asserted uncomfortably.

She sniffed again. "The idea," she said, and after a moment: "I should think you'd have enough pride to stop it."

"How can I?" he demanded.

"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate."

"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."

"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think you don't want to be like anyone else. You always have been that way, and you always will be. But just think how it would be if everyone else looked at things as you do—what would the world be like?"

As this was an inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made no reply, and from that time on a chasm began to widen between them. He wondered what possible fascination she had ever exercised over him.

To add to the breach, he found, as the new century gathered headway, that his thirst for gayety grew stronger. Never a party of any kind in the city of Baltimore but he was there, dancing with the prettiest of the young married women, chatting with the most popular of the debutantes, and finding their company charming, while his wife, a dowager of evil omen, sat among the chaperons, now in haughty disapproval, and now following him with solemn, puzzled, and reproachful eyes.

"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife." They had forgotten—as people inevitably forget—that back in 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this same ill-matched pair.

Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by his many new interests. He took up golf and made a great success of it. He went in for dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and in 1908 he was considered proficient at the "Maxixe," while in 1909 his "Castle Walk" was the envy of every young man in town.

His social activities, of course, interfered to some extent with his business, but then he had worked hard at wholesale hardware for twenty-five years and felt that he could soon hand it on to his son, Roscoe, who had recently graduated from Harvard.

He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each other. This pleased Benjamin—he soon forgot the insidious fear which had come over him on his return from the Spanish-American War, and grew to take a naive pleasure in his appearance. There was only one fly in the delicious ointment—he hated to appear in public with his wife. Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feel absurd. . . .

One September day in 1910—a few years after Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe Button —a man, apparently about twenty years old, entered himself as a freshman at Harvard University in Cambridge. He did not make the mistake of announcing that he would never see fifty again nor did he mention the fact that his son had been graduated from the same institution ten years before.

He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a prominent position in the class, partly because he seemed a little older than the other freshmen, whose average age was about eighteen.

But his success was largely due to the fact that in the football game with Yale he played so brilliantly, with so much dash and with such a cold, remorseless anger that he scored seven touchdowns and fourteen field goals for Harvard, and caused one entire eleven of Yale men to be carried singly from the field, unconscious. He was the most celebrated man in college.

Strange to say, in his third or junior year he was scarcely able to "make" the team. The coaches said that he had lost weight, and it seemed to the more observant among them that he was not quite as tall as before. He made no touchdowns—indeed, he was retained on the team chiefly in hope that his enormous reputation would bring terror and disorganization to the Yale team.

In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had grown so slight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for a freshman, an incident which humiliated him terribly. He became known as something of a prodigy—a senior who was surely no more than sixteen—and he was often shocked at the worldliness of some of his classmates. His studies seemed harder to him—he felt that they were too advanced. He had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas', the famous preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared for college, and he determined after his graduation to enter himself at St. Midas', where the sheltered life among boys his own size would be more congenial to him.

Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore with his Harvard diploma in his pocket. Hildegarde was now residing in Italy, so Benjamin went to live with his son, Roscoe. But though he was welcomed in a general way, there was obviously no heartiness in Ros-coe's feeling toward him—there was even perceptible a tendency on his son's part to think that Benjamin, as he moped about the house in adolescent mooniness, was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now and prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out in connection with his family.

Benjamin, no longer persona grata with the debutantes and younger college set, found himself left much alone, except for the companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in the neighborhood. His idea of going to St. Midas' school recurred to him.

"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over and over that I want to go to prep school."

"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter was distasteful to him, and he wished to avoid a discussion.

"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll have to enter me and take me up there."

"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His eyes narrowed and he looked uneasily at his father. "As a matter of fact," he added, "you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You better pull up short. You better—you better"—he paused and his face crimsoned as he sought for words—"you better turn right around and start back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't funny any longer. You—you behave yourself!"

Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.

"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors are in the house I want you to call me 'Uncle'—not 'Roscoe,' but 'Uncle,' do you understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my first name. Perhaps you'd better call me 'Uncle' all the time, so you'll get used to it." With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away. . . .

1 o

At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered dismally upstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved for three months, but he could find nothing on his face but a faint white down with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the proposition that he should wear eyeglasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early years was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him ashamed. He wept and Roscoe had reluctantly relented.

Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, "The Boy Scouts in Bimini Bay," and began to read. But he found himself thinking persistently about the war. America had joined the Allied cause during the preceding month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen was the minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which was fifty-seven, would have disqualified him, anyway.

There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared with a letter bearing a large official legend in the comer and addressed to Mr. Benjamin Button. Benjamin tore it open eagerly, and read the enclosure with delight. It informed him that many reserve officers who had served in the Spanish-American War were being called back into service with a higher rank, and it enclosed his commission as brigadier-general in the United States Army with orders to report immediately.

Benjamin jumped to his feet fairly quivering with enthusiasm. This was what he had wanted. He seized his cap and ten minutes later he had entered a large tailoring establishment on Charles Street, and asked in his uncertain treble to be measured for a uniform.

"Want to play soldier, sonny?" demanded a clerk, casually.

Benjamin flushed. "Say! Never mind what I want!" he retorted angrily. "My name's Button and I live on Mt. Vemon Place, so you know I'm good for it."

"Well," admitted the clerk, hesitatingly, "if you're not, I guess your daddy is, all right."

Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was completed. He had difficulty in obtaining the proper general's insignia because the dealer kept insisting to Benjamin that a nice Y. W. C. A. badge would look just as well and be much more fun to play with.

Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and proceeded by train to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina, where he was to command an infantry brigade. On a sultry April day he approached the entrance to the camp, paid off the taxicab which had brought him from the station, and turned to the sentry on guard:

"Get someone to handle my luggage!" he said briskly.

The sentry eyed him reproachfully. "Say," he remarked, "where you goin' with the general's duds, sonny?"

Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War, whirled upon him with fire in his eye, but with, alas, a changing treble voice.

"Come to attention!" he tried to thunder; he paused for breath— then suddenly he saw the sentry snap his heels together and bring his rifle to the present. Benjamin concealed a smile of gratification, but when he glanced around, his smile faded. It was not he who had inspired obedience, but an imposing artillery colonel who was approaching on horseback.

"Colonel!" called Benjamin shrilly.

The colonel came up, drew rein, and looked coolly down at him with a twinkle in his eyes. "Whose little boy are you?" he demanded kindly.

"I'll soon dam well show you whose little boy I am!" retorted Benjamin in a ferocious voice. "Get down off that horse!" The colonel roared with laughter. "You want him, eh, general?"

"Here!" cried Benjamin desperately. "Read this." And he thrust his commission toward the colonel.

The colonel read it, his eyes popping from their sockets.

"Where'd you get this?" he demanded, slipping the document into his own pocket.

"I got it from the Government, as you'll soon find out!"

"You come along with me," said the colonel with a peculiar look. "We'll go up to headquarters and talk this over. Come along."

The colonel turned and began walking his horse in the direction of headquarters. There was nothing for Benjamin to do but follow with as much dignity as possible—meanwhile promising himself a stem revenge.

But this revenge did not materialize. Two days later, however, his son Roscoe materialized from Baltimore, hot and cross from a hasty trip, and escorted the weeping general, sans uniform, back to his hofne.

1 1 §-k>

In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was bom. During the attendant festivities, however, no one thought it "the thing" to mention that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age, who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus was the new baby's own grandfather.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face was crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his presence was a source of torment. In the idiom of his generation, Roscoe did not consider the matter "efficient." It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a "red-blooded he-man" —this was Roscoe's favorite expression—but in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that "live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scale was—was—was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested.

Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old enough to play childish games with little Benjamin under the supervision of the same nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day and Benjamin found that playing with little strips of colored paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the world. Once he was bad and had to stand in the comer—then he cried—but for the most part there were gay hours in the cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows and Miss Bailey's kind hand resting for a moment now and then in his tousled hair.

Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a year, but Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy. Sometimes when other tots talked about what they would do when they grew up a shadow would cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he realized that those were things in which he was never to share.

The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what the bright shining strips of paper were for. He cried because the other boys were bigger than he and he was afraid of them. The teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand he could not understand at all.

He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana, in her starched gingham dress, became the centre of his tiny world. On bright days they walked in the park; Nana would point at a great gray monster and say "elephant," and Benjamin would say it after her, and when he was being undressed for bed that night he would say it over and over aloud to her: "Elyphant, elyphant, elyphant." Sometimes Nana let him jump on the bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly right it would bounce you up on your feet again, and if you said "Ah" for a long time while you jumped you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.

He loved to take a big cane from the hatrack and go around hitting chairs and tables with it and saying: "Fight, fight, fight." When there were people there the old ladies would cluck at him, which interested him, and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which he submitted to with mild boredom. And when the long day was done at five o'clock he would go upstairs with Nana and be fed oatmeal and nice soft mushy foods with a spoon.

There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at just before his twilight bed hour and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes were sleepy—there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.

The past—the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved;

the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather—all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been.

He did not remember. He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days passed— there was only his crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was hungry he cried—that was all. Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness.

Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.

Reprinted by permission of William Heinemann Ltd., and the Estate of Maurice Baring.

Tke Alternative

By MAURICE BARING

I WAS READING HISTORY, AND NOT FOR FUN. I WAS READING FOR MY

schools. My third year at Balliol was drawing to an end, and I was expected to do well, and at the back of my dreams there was a vision of a fellowship and a quiet life in the security of Oxford.

I had been reading until late in the night. I was tired. I had been reading about Napoleon and the Russian Campaign of 1812. And now I had stopped reading and had fallen into an abstraction. I noticed that the time by the clock was 1.15.1 was thinking of great men and the part they played in history, and to what extent events were modified by phenomena, such as Caesar or Napoleon; as to whether they made a difference, or whether writers such as Tolstoi were right, who maintained that they made no difference. I thought of many things: of William James's Essay on Great Men, of Carlyle's Heroes, of Ferrerio, of Mr. Wells's Outline of History. What would have happened, I said to myself, if Napoleon's father had sent his son into the British Navy, as he wanted to do at one moment, instead of into the French Army? Would everything have been different, or would everything have been exactly the same?

"Everything would have been different, but the result would have been just the same," said a voice at my elbow.

I looked up and saw sitting in the armchair which stood on the left of my writing table a little old man. He was old and yet he did not look old. He was ageless. He had a thick head of hair, and you could not tell whether it was white or grey. His eyes were clear and luminous. There were no lines on his face. There were none of the usual signs of old age about him, and yet he gave the impression of immense old age, and of an almost infinite experience.

I did not feel in the least surprised at this sudden apparition. It seemed to me quite natural that this strange unaged old man should be sitting in my armchair. I did not even interrupt; I merely waited for the old man to go on.

"Everything would have been different, but the result would have been the same," the stranger repeated. "You know how to play chess?" he asked.

I said I was an enthusiastic but unskilful chess player.

"Very well," said the stranger. "Supposing you play a game with a professional, you make certain mistakes, and you lose the game. Let us assume you keep a record of the moves, and that when the game is over your adversary allows you to play it over again. Say you rectify an initial blunder; you use different openings, different gambits; you have a new scheme, an improved strategical plan. Every move you make in this second game is different from those you made in the first game. But do you win? No. Because your adversary, the professional, changes his game in such a manner as to meet and answer the changed nature of your game. He replies to your new strategy with a new counter-strategy; his counter-moves lead you to move as he wishes, and in the end he checkmates you.

"So it is with men in history. Supposing you were to eliminate the great men of history, and substitute for them men of a different nature; or supposing you left them as they were, but changed the quality of the moves and shortened or lengthened their careers inversely to what happened in history, as you know it, then every move in the game would be different; but, in spite of that, the march of history and the fate of mankind would be the same."

"I understand that's quite possible," I said, "but forgive the question, how do you know?"

"Because," said the stranger, "I am the historiographer of the Kingdom of Limbo. I teach the ghosts history—alternative history, in case they should be conceited."

"Yes," I said, "but how I don't quite see. Films? A cinematograph?"

"Oh, no," said the stranger. "We do better than that; we plunge the student into the life of an alternative world; alternative to the period in which he lived on earth; and we let him leam from experience, as an eyewitness, what that epoch would have been like had his part been either nonexistent or different."

"Very interesting," I said. "I should like a glimpse of an alternative world of that kind."

"Nothing is easier," said the stranger. "Choose any epoch you like and I will take you there."

"Well," I said, "I should like to see what would have happened in the period I am reading about, supposing Napoleon had entered the British Navy instead of the French Army."

"Nothing is easier," said the stranger. "You shall have two peeps into that world between 1800 and 1850. Come along."

I felt dazed for a moment, but only for a moment, and when I recovered from this fleeting flash of unconsciousness I found myself wide awake. I was sitting on a verandah; in front of me was a sea-coast, against which large grey breakers were rolling; behind me sashed windows which reached to the ground opened on to a parlour; and something touched a cell or struck a note in my memory which made me think of Miss Austen's novels, of Cranford, and of the breakfast room in a country house where I had once stayed in my childhood. Was it a faint smell of lavender that came from indoors, or the taste of the saffron bun I had just eaten, for I had just taken a bite from a saffron bun, or the elder-flower wine that I was sipping, or the picture of King George on the wall I could see over the chimney piece of the room beyond the verandah? I don't know.

That parlour was bare, and might have belonged to almost any epoch. It was slightly damp. I knew that I was not in Europe, although there was nothing extra-European either behind or before me. I was talking to a man, who, although he was dressed in nankeen, had something indefinably maritime about him. He was middle-aged, with a tawny beard streaked with grey hairs, and his face was tanned and worn by exposure; there was nothing rough, bluff, or hearty about him, but, on the contrary, an air of gentle and slightly melancholy refinement. He was smoking a pipe, and after taking a puff or two in silence, he took up the thread of his discourse again. I was certain that the conversation was being continued and not being begun, and I felt quite satisfied when my quiet interlocutor said:

"Yes, that was her first cruise." It seemed the natural, inevitable thing for him to say.

At that moment a fat, sallow, dark-haired man, dressed in nankeen and wearing a broad panama hat, strolled along the beach in front of us, whistling to himself a tune which I seemed to have heard before.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"That's the Captain," said my host. "He's-------- " He touched his

forehead meaningly. "Mad?" asked I.

"No, not mad, but queer," said my host. "Has illusions—thinks he's King of England one day and Emperor of India the next. A curious career his as ever man had. His real name is Bonnypart, though he now goes by the name of Jackson, and his father, so they say, was an Italian skipper in one of the French colonial islands. He was anxious for his son to have a good education, so he sent him to England to be naturalized as an Englishman and to serve King George in the British Navy. The lad was partial to learning and took to the sea like a duck takes to water, and all went well till the French Jacobites declared war on us a second time in 1805. He was already a Captain then, promotion in those times being speedy. He disobeyed orders when the fleet was pursuing Admiral Villeneuve, and some say it was thanks to his breach of discipline that the fleet was not destroyed at Trafalgar. Be that as it may, the Admiralty had a black mark against his name from that moment, and he was warned that he had got off lightly the first time, owing to the victory and to Admiral Nelson's intercession; Admiral Nelson saying that he had no use for the man who did not know how to obey orders at the right moment (but that did not please their Lordships). But shortly after the battle he was accused of cheating at cards, whether rightly or wrongly I don't know, but I have seen men who have been shipmates with him who said that never had they seen a man with a quicker brain for business and a slower head for cards; that there was no game he could master, and he cheated for very weariness, and neither for love of gain nor gambling. This time he was court-martialled, found guilty and dismissed from the service. Admiral Nelson could no longer intercede for him, for the Admiral himself had been superseded owing to the newspaper clamour which arose over his handling of the fleet at Trafalgar. Bonnypart changed his name to Jackson, and enlisted as a soldier in Wellesley's Army. He fought against the French Republic in Germany, and on the Eastern frontier against the Russians, and after a year or two he was given a commission. After the French Jacobites were defeated by the Germans and the Russians in 1814, he was once more promoted to the rank of Captain. This time he came into collision with Wellesley, now Lord Wellington. When the Allies occupied Paris, the Duke declared he would go out fox-hunting in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and Captain Jackson, being a poor rider, and having foreign blood in him and consequently no feeling for the sport, jeered openly at Wellington's intention. News of this got round to the General, who ordered Jackson to go out hunting with him the next day. Jackson did; but he shot the fox dead in the middle of a spanking run, and all but hit the General into the bargain. When he was had up before his Commanding Officer he answered with great insolence, and he was cashiered for insubordination. Being a restless fellow, he thought he would take service with the French or the Italians, and went to his old home, Sardinia or Elba. In 1815, when General Murat turned out the French King, Jackson enlisted in the French Navy, and the vessel he was in was captured not far from this island of St. Helena by a British frigate just before peace was made in 1815. He was imprisoned here as a deserter, and would have been tried for his life, but by this time the illusions which some say had been simmering in him for a long time, aggravated by a blow on the head which he had received in the scrap at sea, got the better of him, and the doctors said he was not responsible for his actions. They kept him shut up in the hospital here at Longwood, but after a while the doctor, finding he was harmless, let him have the run of the island. Harmless he is, too, although there is a warder called Hudson who has an eye on him. You can see him now, behind that tree, some thirty yards behind the Captain. The Captain often stops to spin a yam with me, and he is pleasant spoken and knowledgeable too about seamanship and the weather, and he has only one or two delusions. One is that he is King of England, and the other that he can play cribbage, which he cannot do without cheating, but we keep cards out of his way lest they should upset him.

"Would you like to speak with him?" said my host. "He is coming this way."

I said I would be delighted to, and, as Captain Jackson walked towards the house where we were sitting, my host rose and beckoned to him.

Captain Jackson had a remarkable face, remarkable for its extreme pallor, and for the brilliance of his penetrating eyes. He looked me up and down, and then asked in an abrupt way:

"Oxford or Cambridge?"

I felt embarrassed by his abruptness, but managed to get the word Oxford across my lips.

"What college?" he asked. "Balliol, I suppose." And without waiting for an answer he said: "What are you studying?"

I said: "History."

"Bah," he said, "they can't teach history at Oxford. There are only two places where you can learn history. One is the Navy and the other the Army, and both of them in times of war."

Upon which he took a pinch of snuff, turned his back, and walked quickly away.

Up to that moment the conversation had seemed to me quite natural, as if I had belonged to the circumstances in which I suddenly found myself, as if I was a contemporary, taking part in the events of the day, but from the moment that Captain Jackson left us i seemed to be two people: the man who was on the island and who belonged to this remoter epoch, and my real twentieth-century self.

"Did Captain Jackson fight for Napoleon?" I asked.

"Napoleon?" said my host. "I never heard of him."

"The Emperor of the French," I said.

"There never was no Emperor as I ever heard of," said my host. "There was a King and they cut his head off. And then there was a Jacobite Republic which overran half Europe, spreading revolution wherever it went, in Italy, Spain, Germany, and even in Russia. They won victories, then they were beat. As soon as all the world made peace, they made war again and won victories again, and at last they were beat altogether, and the King came into his own."

"Then who," I asked, "is King of France now?" baring: the alternative

"Why, Louis XVIII, of course. And thanks to those Jacobites, of a much smaller France than belonged to his ancestors. He had to give up Alsace and half Lorraine to the Germans."

His voice seemed to grow faint as he said this, and the scene melted. I rubbed my eyes and found that I was walking down a street, arm-in-arm with a stranger. I soon recognized the street. It was Whitehall.

"That," said the man who was walking with me, "is the Horse Guards."

I realized that I was being shown over London. I was possibly a stranger of distinction. My guide was floridly dressed. He wore a crimson necktie and a carbuncle pin, a yellow satin waistcoat, a large choker, a little imperial; his eyes were bright and penetrating, his manner vivacious. There was something slightly histrionic about him.

I recognized certain familiar landmarks. The traffic, the hansom carriages, and the four-wheelers made a clatter in the street; elegant barouches passed us. The ladies wore crinolines; the men, Dundreary whiskers. I felt I had been landed into the world of Thackeray. We passed an unfamiliar statue which stood where the war memorial now stands.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"That," said my guide, "is the statue erected in memory of a poet who died fighting for the cause of royalty, order, and the fleur-de-lis against the hosts of anarchy and murder in France during the great Jacobin War. He was killed fighting on the barricades in Paris. He showed great promise as a writer. His name was William Wordsworth."

Just then we passed a dignified-looking old gentleman with white hair dressed in the fashion of an earlier period. He wore a blue swallow-tailed coat, a buff nankeen waistcoat, and a fob with many seals hanging from it. He was a dignified and picturesque figure. He stooped slightly. His eyes were those of a mathematician or an inventor. There was an air of great distinction about him, not un-mingled with a whiff of scholarship. I asked my guide who he was.

"That," he answered, "is the Conservative Member for Horsham, Sir Percy Shelley."

"The son of the poet?" I asked.

"Oh dear, no," said my guide. "His father was not a poet. His father was a squire, Sir Timothy Shelley. It is true that Sir Percy did write some verse as a youth, but we never refer to that now. I assure you nobody ever refers to it. Boyish peccadilloes. Very regrettable, as they were atheistic, often heathen in tone, and sometimes even licentious in character. But boys will be boys, and the young must sow their wild oats. He has amply atoned for all that. Fortunately few of those early effusions were printed, and Sir Percy was able to withdraw from circulation and to destroy every single copy of that most deplorable doggerel. Sir Percy is one of the pillars of the Conservative Party, and the speech he made against Reform and the Extension of Suffrage Bill is a classic. He is a great patriot, is Sir Percy, and he wrote some stirring words about the war which were published in The Times newspaper, and then set to music and enjoyed a wide popularity. "The refrain ran:

We don't want to fight, But Zeus help them if we do.

You see, Sir Percy is a classical scholar and can never resist a Greek word. He never quotes Greek in the House, but Horace is always upon his lips. Horace, as he rightly says, is so quotable." "Then he never writes now?" I asked.

"He occasionally writes to The Times newspaper," said my guide.
"You see," he went on, "he is a very busy man, chairman of many
committees, and one of the most prominent members of the Conserv-
ative Club, and on the boards of I don't know how many hospitals
and charitable institutions. He plays a fair hand at whist, and always
rides to the meet of the foxhounds if it is not too far off, and he is a
sound and earnest Churchman--- "

"Not a ritualist, I suppose?"

"Oh, no, not a ritualist; far from it. A sound, broad Churchman; not too high and not too low. He reads the lessons on Sunday at Horsham, with much expression and fervour, although his voice is a little shrill."

"Does he ever refer to his friendship with Lord Byron?" I asked. "They meet sometimes on State occasions." "But isn't Lord Byron dead?"

"Dead! Dear me, no, unless he died last night. I haven't heard His Eminence was ill."

"I thought he died at Missolonghi in 1824."

"Oh, no; he returned from that Grecian expedition much shattered in health, and after a period of solitary reflection, which he spent in the Channel Islands, he joined the Church of Rome. He is now, of course, a Cardinal, and lives at Birmingham."

"But his works?" I asked. "Did he suppress them?"

"Oh dear, no, sir. He wrote a great deal, and the last cantos of Don Juan, which tell of the Don's conversion and bona mors, are reckoned to be among the most pious and edifying books of the century, by men of all religious denominations. He wrote, too, a fine sequel to Cain, called The Death of Cain, which is even more edifying, and even now he still writes hymns, some of which are popular both in the Roman, Anglican, and Evangelical Churches. Notably one which begins:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold.

"But Cardinal Byron is better known now for his sermons than for his lyrics. He preaches most eloquently, and it is worth a journey to Birmingham to hear him."

"But who," I asked, "are the greatest contemporary poets?"

"Well," said my guide, "undoubtedly the greatest living poet is a woman, a portentous star of the first magnitude; I am talking of the fiery, volcanic, incandescent genius of Felicia Hemans, the author of that burning rhapsody Casa Bianca. She is undoubtedly the greatest woman poet since the days of Sappho, and perhaps even more passionate. We have just lost one great poet, James Montgomery. He was the greatest, in fact the only, epic poet since the days of Gray. Then there is Benjamin Disraeli, author of so many beautiful poetical dramas. Then you have the sombre and tortured broodings of Adelaide Proctor, and the fierce, bitter, biting etchings of Jean Ingelow; in fact, it is an age of poetesses more than of poets."

"And what about Alfred Tennyson?" I asked.

"The brother of the poet, Frederick?" said my guide. "Poor fellow, he was killed in the war a few months ago at Balaclava; a very gallant soldier."

"And the poet Keats," I said. "Have you heard of him?"

"Of course," was the answer. "Who has not heard of him? It is impossible to avoid. He publishes a fresh volume of verse every year; but ever since he has lived at Torquay, where he originally settled down some thirty years ago, he has written practically nothing except about agriculture and crops and livestock. The hero of his last verse-narrative was a Shorthom. He writes too much. All very instructive, of course, and parts of it are descriptive, but he writes a great deal too much. That's just what ruined Coleridge."

"But Coleridge is surely not alive?" I said.

"He died," I was informed, "two or three years ago. He was eighty years old. He died of overwork. He had just finished the last book of his epic, Kubla Khan. It has fifteen books, you will remember, and it is the longest epic in the English language. His one fear was that he should die before he should complete it. As it was, he finished it just six months before his death, and he had the joy of seeing the massive work in print. It is longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey put together, and the building of it occupied the whole of the poet's life."

"And did it meet with a satisfactory reception?" I asked.

"Most satisfactory. One critic in the Quarterly Review even went so far—it was perhaps a little extravagant on his part—as to put it in the same rank as Southey's immortal epics."

"Did Coleridge finish all his poems?" I asked.

My guide seemed quite offended by this question. Offended for Coleridge and shocked at my ignorance.

"Of course he did," he said. "Coleridge was the most hard-working and conscientious of writers, and, as I have already told you, he died of overwork."

"But," I persisted, "did he ever finish Christabel?"

My guide smiled a superior, tolerant smile.

"Christabel," he said, "is not by Coleridge at all. It is by De Quincey."

I gasped with astonishment. "De Quincey, the opium eater?"

"He wrote several things of the same kind. The Albatross and The Dark Lady, all most fantastic stuff. Poor man, he was lightheaded at the last. It came from taking drugs."

This account of the world of poetry so bewildered me that I thought I should feel on firmer ground if we passed to the domain of prose, and I asked who were considered the best novelists of the day.

"Well," said my guide, "there has been nothing very interesting in that way just lately. Mr. Thackeray has written a most insignificant story called Vanity Fair; all about those trumpery Jacobin Wars, which interest nobody now. Mr. Carlyle wrote a spirited romance some years ago which suffered from the same fault, namely, that of dealing with a hackneyed, commonplace and dreary epoch: the Jacobin revolt. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle's work is the more tedious as it deals solely with France and with the French, and nobody now takes any interest in that country. There are, of course, a fine series of romances by Froude, and the powerful but rather morbid studies of real life by Miss Charlotte Yonge; the monumental history of Harrison Ains-worth; the fantastic short stories of Ruskin, and the almost too sprightly, too flippant satire and Puck-like wit of Herbert Spencer."

I asked whether the influence of the French was felt in recent literature. My guide said that the influence of French literature had been negligible. Ever since the restoration of the French monarchy French literature had been pursuing an even but uninteresting course. During the prosperous and calm reign of Charles X, the most notable names in the literature of France were, as in England, nearly all those of women. There was Madame Desbordes Valmore, Madame Victor Hugo, Mademoiselle Lamartine, all of whom had written agreeable lyrics and some tuneful and melodious narrative poems. Among the male poets the most remarkable was Georges Sand. During the reign of Henry V the same pure and refined standards had been upheld, but it could not be denied that this literature, although admirable in tone, sane in its outlook, and exemplary in the lessons which it taught, did not go down across the Channel. The England of Miss Yonge and Mrs. Gaskell—those unflinching realists, those intrepid divers into the unplumbed depths and mysteries of the human soul, those undaunted and ruthless surgeons of all the secret sores of the spirit and of the flesh—was used to stronger meat, and insisted on getting it.

"But," I said, "what about Musset and Baudelaire?"

My guide seemed astonished. "Musset?" he said. "I have never heard of a writer called Musset."

"Alfred de Musset," I suggested.

"There is a Secretary of the French Embassy here by that name, but as far as we know he has never written anything. As for Baudelaire, his hymns, psalms, and meditations are fervent and pious, and deserve respect, but they are so ultra-devotional and so full of technical theology and the jargon of the sacristy, that they would certainly find no public here. Cardinal Byron, it is true, admires them greatly, and has even published a translation of some of the hymns. No, we have little use for the goody-goody milk-and-water idealism here. All that would never go down in the country of Miss Austen." . "But," I objected, "surely Miss Austen was a great artist."

"Certainly, certainly, as great as the Pyramids, but artist is hardly the word. It is true she created the whole world, but she looked at the universe through the distorted lens of her lurid and monstrous imagination. She dipped her pen into the waters of Tartarus, so that she invests a page boy with the personality of a Hannibal, and lends satanic proportions to the meanest of her rogues. Yet what she saw she described with such minute accuracy and with such wealth of detail, and abundance and even redundance of description, that the critics have almost universally acclaimed her as the founder of the great realistic-naturalistic English novel, whereas if they would only think more carefully they would see that Miss Austen is the last of the great romantic poets, the lineal descendant of Pope and Cowper, and the kindred spirit and rival of that most flamboyant of all the romantics, Crabbe."

"And Russian literature?" I asked. "Has that had any influence here?"

"Ever since the Russian Republic and the United States of Russia were called into being by the Emperor Alexander I in 1819, Russian art and literature practically came to an end. Politics and business engrossed the minds of the rising generation there, and, as General John Bright, that dashing cavalry soldier, so well put it: 'The Russians are completely inartistic. They are a nation of shopkeepers.' "

"But are not we fighting the Russians in the Crimea now?" I asked.

"We are fighting in the Crimea, but not against the Russians. They are our Allies and we are fighting the Turks. The Emperor Constan-tine has arranged with our Foreign Secretary, Feargus O'Connor, that Russia is to have Constantinople, we are to take Egypt, and the French are to have Syria. As for Palestine, it is possible that the Jews may be allowed to go there. Ever since their expulsion from England, twenty years ago, they have greatly complained of having nowhere to live."

Just at that moment an open carriage drove by drawn by four white horses with postilions and outriders. Inside the carriage a magnificent baring: the alternative

Englishman with a long black beard bowed to the populace, who cheered. I asked who it was.

"That is the King of Greece, once better known as Lord Elcho. He is here on a visit. The Greeks just now are very popular, as we are fighting the Turks."

We had passed the Houses of Parliament and had reached the doors of what I took to be a large theatre.

"Here," said my guide, "I must leave you. I must go to rehearsal."

"One moment," I said. "There is one name we have not mentioned connected with the world of literature: that of Charles Dickens. Are his works popular?"

My guide was convulsed with laughter.

"That," he said, "is a really good joke. Charles Dickens a writer!"
"But------ " I said.

"My dear sir," he answered, "you surely are not going to argue the point with me. I am Charles Dickens, and your humble servant, an actor by profession, and if you would like to see me play Paul Pry tonight I can give you an order for a box, and supper and some grilled bones afterwards."

I was about to answer something when I once again felt dizzy, and when I recovered consciousness again I was sitting in my rooms. I was alone this time, and the time by the clock was 1.16.1 had been asleep for a minute.

From Four-in-Hand, by J. B. Priestley, reprinted by permission of A. D. Peters & W. N. Roughead.

Mr. Stent erry s Tale

By J. B. PRIESTLEY

"AND THANK YOU," SAID THE LANDLADY, WITH THE MECHANICAL CHEER-

fulness of her kind. She pushed across the counter one shilling and four coppers, which all contrived to get wet on the journey. "Yes, it's quiet enough. Sort of weather to bring them in too, though it's a bit early yet for our lot. Who's in the Private Bar?" She craned her fat little neck, peered across the other side, and then returned, looking very confidential. "Only one. But he's one of our reg'lars. A bit too reg'lar, if you ask me, Mr. Strenberry is."

I put down my glass, and glanced out, through the open door. All I could see was a piece of wet road. The rain was falling now with that precision which suggests it will go on for ever. It was darker too. "And who is Mr. Strenberry?" I enquired, merely for want of something better to do. It did not matter to me who Mr. Strenberry was.

The landlady leaned forward a little. "He's the schoolmaster from ^lown the road," she replied, in a delighted whisper. "Been here— oh, lemme see—it must be four years, might be five. Came from London here. Yes, that's where he came from, London. Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace, that's his home. I know because he's told me so himself, and I've a sister that's lived near there these twenty years."

I said nothing. There did not seem to be anything to say. The fact that the local schoolmaster came from Sydenham left me as uninterested as it found me. So I merely nodded, took another sip, and filled a pipe.

The landlady glanced at me with a faint reproach in her silly prominent eyes. "And he's queer is Mr. Strenberry," she added, with something like defiance. "Oh yes, he's queer enough. Clever, y'know—in a sort of way, book-learning and all that, if you follow my meanin'—but, well—he's queer."

"In what way is he queer?" It was the least I could do.

She put her hand up to her mouth. "His wife left him. That's about two years ago. Took their little boy with her too. Gone to stay with relations, it was given out, but we all knew. She left him all right. Just walked out one fine morning and the little boy with her. Nice little boy, too, he was. He lives alone now, Mr. Strenberry. And a nice mess, too, I'll be bound. Just look at his clothes. He won't be schoolmaster-ing here much longer neither. He's been given a few warnings, that I do know. And you can't blame 'em, can you?"

I replied, with the melancholy resignation that was expected of me, that I could not blame them. Clearly, Mr. Strenberry, with his nice mess, his clothes, his general queerness, would not do.

The landlady shook her head and tightened her lips. "It's the same old trouble now. Taking too much. I don't say getting drunk—because, as far as I can see, he doesn't—but still, taking too much, too reg'lar with it. A lot o' people, temperancers and that sort," she went on, bitterly, "think we want to push it down customers' throats. All lies. I never knew anybody that kept a decent house that didn't want people to go steady with it. I've dropped a few hints to Mr. Strenberry, but he takes no notice. And what can you do? If he's quiet, behaves himself, and wants it, he's got to have it, hasn't he? We can't stop him. However, I don't want to say too much. And anyhow it isn't just what he takes that makes him queer. It's the way he goes on, and what he says—when he feels like saying anything, and that's not often."

"You mean, he talks queerly?" I said, casually. Perhaps a man of ideas, Mr. Strenberry.

"He might go a week, he might go a fortnight, and not a word-except 'Good evening' or 'Thank you,' for he's always the gentleman in here, I must say—will you get out of him. Some of the lively ones try to draw him out a bit, pull his leg as you might say—but not a word. Then, all of a sudden, he'll let himself go, talk your head off.

And you never heard such stuff. I don't say I've heard much of it myself because I haven't the time to listen to it and I can't be bothered with it, but some of the other customers have told me. If you ask me, it's a bit of a shame, the way they go on, because it's getting to be

a case of---- " And here she tapped her forehead significantly. "Mind

you, it may have been his queemess that started all his troubles, his wife leaving him and all that. There's several that knows him better than I do will tell you that. Brought it all on himself, they say. But it does seem a pity, doesn't it?"

She looked at me mournfully for about a second and a half, then became brisk and cheerful again. "He's in there now," she added, and bustled away to the other side of the bar, where two carters were demanding half-pints.

I went to the outer door and stood there a moment, watching the persistent rain. It looked as if I should not be able to make a move for at least half an hour. So I ordered another drink and asked the landlady to serve it in the Private Bar, where Mr. Strenberry was hiding his queemess. Then I followed her and took a seat near the window, only a few feet away from Mr. Strenberry.

He was sitting there behind a nearly empty glass, with an unlighted stump of cigarette drooping from a comer of his mouth. Everything about him was drooping. He was a tall, slack, straggling sort of fellow; his thin greying hair fell forward in front; his nose was long, with something pendulous about its reddened tip; his moustache drooped wearily; and even his chin fell away, as if in despair. His eye had that boiled look common to all persevering topers.

"Miserable day," I told him.

"It is," he said. "Rotten day." He had a high-pitched but slightly husky voice, and I imagined that its characteristic tone would probably be querulous.

There was silence then, or at least nothing but the sound of the rain outside and the murmur of voices from the bar. I stared at the Highlanders and the hunting men who, from various parts of the room, invited you to try somebody's whisky and somebody else's port.

"Got a match?" said Mr. Strenberry, after fumbling in his pockets.

I handed him my matchbox and took the opportunity of moving a little nearer. It was obvious that that stump of cigarette would not last him more than half a minute, so I offered him my cigarette case too.

"Very quiet in here," I remarked.

"For once," he replied, a kind of weak sneer lighting up his face. "Lucky for us too. There are more fools in this town than in most, and they all come in here. Lot of loud-mouthed idiots. I won't talk to 'em, won't waste my breath on 'em. They think there's something wrong with me here. They would." He carefully drained his glass, set it down, then pushed it away.

I hastened to finish my glass of bitter. Then I made a pretence of examining the weather. "Looks as if I shall have to keep under cover for another quarter of an hour or so," I said carelessly. "I'm going to have another drink. Won't you join me?"

After a little vague humming and spluttering, he said he would, and thanked me. He asked for a double whisky and a small soda.

"And so you find the people here very stupid?" I said, after we had taken toll of our fresh supply of drink. "They often are in these small towns."

"All idiots," he muttered. "Not a man with an educated mind amongst them. But then—education! It's a farce, that's all it is, a farce. I come in here—I must go somewhere, you know—and I sit in a corner and say nothing. I know what they're beginning to think. Oh, I've seen them—nudging, you know, giving each other the wink. I don't care. One time I would have cared. Now I don't. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters, really."

I objected mildly to this pessimism.

"I know," he went on, looking at me sombrely. "You needn't tell me. I can see you're an intelligent man, so it's different. But you can't argue with me, and I'll tell you why. You see, you don't know what I know. Oh, I don't care if they do think I'm queer. I am queer. And so would you be if you'd seen what I've seen. They wouldn't because they wouldn't have the sense. . . ." His voice trailed away. He shrugged his thin sloping shoulders. His face took on a certain obstinate look that you often see on the faces of weak men. Evidently he thought he had said too much.

I was curious now. "I don't see what you mean," I began. "No doubt you've had unpleasant experiences, but then most of us have at some time or other." I looked at him expectantly.

"I don't mean that," he said, raising his voice and adding a touch of scorn. "This is different. You wouldn't understand, unless I told you it all. Even then you mightn't. It's difficult. Oh, what's the use!" He finished his whisky in one quick gulp. "Well, I wish you'd tell me."

Doubtfully, mournfully, he examined my face, then he stared about the room, pulling his straggling and drooping moustache. "Could I have another cigarette?" he asked, finally. When he had lit it, he blew out a cloud of smoke, then looked at me again.

"I've seen something nobody else has seen," said Mr. Strenberry. "I've seen the end of it all, all this," he waved a hand and gave a bitter little laugh, "building houses, factories, education, public health, churches, drinking in pubs, getting children, walking in fields, everything, every mortal blessed thing. That's what I've seen, a glimpse anyhow. Finish! Finish! The End!"

"It sounds like doomsday," I told him.

"And that's what it was," cried Mr. Strenberry, his face lighting up
strangely. "Anyhow, that's what it amounted to. I can't think about
anything else. And you couldn't either, if you'd been there. I've gone
back to it, thought about it, thought round and round it, oh, thou-
sands of times! Do you know Opperton Heath? You do? Well, that's
where it happened, nearly three years ago. That's all, three years ago.
I'd gone up there for a walk and to have a look at the birds. I used to
be very interested in birds—my God, I've dropped that now—and
there are one or two rare kinds up on the Heath there. You know
what it's like—lonely. I hadn't met a soul all afternoon. That's the
worst of it. If there'd only been somebody else there- "

He broke off, took up his smouldering cigarette, put it down again and stared in front of him. I kept quiet, afraid that a chance word might suddenly shut him up altogether.

"It was a warm afternoon," he said, beginning again as abruptly as he had stopped, "and I was lying on the grass, smoking. I remember I was wondering whether to hurry back and get home in time for tea or to stay where I was and not bother about tea. And I wish to God I'd decided to go back, before it happened. But I didn't. There I was, warm, a bit drowsy, just looking at the Heath. Not a soul in sight. Very quiet. If I could write poetry, I'd write a poem about the Heath as I saw it then, before the thing happened. It's all I would write too. The last five minutes there." He broke off again, and I believe there were tears in his eyes. He looked a figure of maudlin self-pity, but nevertheless it may have been the lost peace and beauty of the world that conjured up those tears. I did not know then. I do not know now.

"Then I saw something," said Mr. Strenbeny. "It was a sort of disturbance in the air, not fifty yards from where I was. I didn't take much notice at first, because you get that flickering on a warm day up there. But this went on. I can't describe it properly, not to make you see it. But in a minute or two, you couldn't help noticing it. Like a thin revolving column of air. A waterspout made of air, if you see what I mean? And there was something dark, something solid, in the centre of it. I thought it must have something to do with a meteor. I got up and went closer, cautiously, you know, taking no chances. It didn't seem to be affecting anything else. There was no wind or anything. Everything was as quiet as it was before. But this column of air was more definite now, though I can't exactly explain how it came to look so definite. But you knew it was there all right, like seeing one piece of glass against another piece. Only there was movement in this, and faster than the fastest piece of machinery you ever set eyes on. And that dark thing in the centre was solider every second. I went closer still. And then the movement inside the column—like a glassy sort of pillar it was, though that doesn't quite give you the idea—stopped, though there was still a flickering and whirling on the outside. I could see that dark thing plainly now. It was a man—a sort of man."

Mr. Strenberry shut his eyes, put his hands up to them, and leaned forward on his elbows. In the quiet that followed, I could hear two fellows laughing in the bar outside. They were shouting something about a litter of pigs.

"He was a lightish greeny-blue in colour, this man," Mr. Strenberry continued, "and the same all over. He'd no clothes on, but I got the idea that he'd a very tough skin, leathery, y'know. It shone a bit too. He'd no hair on him at all, and didn't look as if he'd shaved it all off but as if he'd never had any. He was bigger than me, bigger than you, but no giant. I should say he was about the size and figure of one of your big heavyweight boxers—except for his head. He'd a tremendous head—and of course as bald as an egg—and a wonderful face. I can see it now. It was flatfish, like some of the faces of the Egyptian statues in the British Museum, but what you noticed the minute you saw it, were the eyes. They were more like a beautiful woman's eyes than a man's, very big and soft, y'know, but bigger and softer than any woman's eyes—and such a colour, a kind of dark purple. Full of intelligence too. Blazing with it, I knew that at once. In fact, I could see that this man was as far above me as I am above a Hottentot. More highly developed, y'know. I'm not saying this because of what I learned afterwards. I saw it at once. You couldn't mistake it. This greeny-blue hairless man knew a million things we'd never heard of, and you could see it in his eyes. Well, there he was, and he stared at me and I stared at him."

"Go on," I said, for Mr. Strenberry had stopped and was now busy staring at me.

"This is the part you've got to try and understand," he cried, excitedly. "You see, this queer revolving cylinder of air was between us, and if it had been glass two feet thick it couldn't have separated us any better. I couldn't get at him. I don't say I tried very hard at first; I was too surprised and frightened. But I did try to get nearer after a minute or two, but I couldn't, and I can't possibly explain to you—no, not if I tried for a week—how I was stopped. Call it a transparent wall, if you like, but that doesn't give you the idea of it. Anyhow, it doesn't matter about me. The point is, he couldn't get out, and he obviously knew more about it than I did and he was trying desperately hard. He'd got some sort of little instrument in each hand—I could see them flash—and he kept bringing these together. He was terribly agitated. But he couldn't get out. He'd stopped the inside of this column revolving, as I said, but apparently he couldn't stop the outside, which was whirling and whirling just as fast as ever.

"I've asked myself thousands of times," Mr. Strenberry went on, more reflectively now, "what would have happened if he had got out. Would he have ruled the whole world, knowing so much more than we do? Or would these fools have shoved him into a cage, made a show of him, and finally killed him? Though I don't imagine they could have done that, not with this man. And then again, could he have existed at all once he had got out? I don't mean just microbes and things, though they might easily have killed him off, because I don't suppose his body knew anything about such a germ-ridden atmosphere as ours. No, I don't mean that. This is the point. If he'd got out, really burst into this twentieth-century world, he might have stopped existing at all, just vanished into nothing, because after all this twentieth-century isn't just a date, it's also a condition, a state of things, and—you see—it doesn't include him. Though, of course, in a sense it does—or it did—because there he was, on the Heath that day."

"I'm afraid I don't follow all this," I said. "But go on, perhaps it will become clearer."

Mr. Strenberry leaned forward and fixed me with his little boiled eyes. "Don't you see, this man had come from the future? Fellows like H. G. Wells have always been writing about us taking a jump into the future, to have a look at our distant descendants, but of course we don't. We can't; we don't know enough. But what about them, taking a jump into the past, to have a look at us? That's far more likely, when you come to think of it. But I don't mean that is what this man was doing. He was trying to do more than that. If you ask me, they'd often taken a peep at us, and at our great-great-grandparents, and for that matter at our great-great-grandchildren too. But he wasn't just doing that. He was trying to get out, to escape from his own time altogether."

I drew in a long breath, then blew it out again, slowly.

"Don't you think I'm merely guessing that," cried Mr. Strenberry, "because I'm not. I know. And I know because he told me. I don't mean to say we talked. As a matter of fact, I did try shouting at him— asking him who he was and where he'd come from, and all that—but I don't think he heard me, and if he did, he certainly didn't understand. But don't make any mistake—he saw me all right. He looked at me just as I looked at him. He made a sign or two, and might have made more if he hadn't been so busy with those instruments and so desperately agitated. He didn't shout at me, never opened his lips. But he thought at me. That's the only way I can describe it. Messages from him arrived in my head, and turned themselves into my own words, and even little pictures. And it was horrible—horrible, I tell you. Everything was finished, and he was trying to escape. The only way he could do it was to try and jump back into the past, out of the way. There wasn't much of the world left, fit to live in. Just one biggish island, not belonging to any of the continents we know—they'd all gone, long ago. I don't know the date. That never came through, and if it had, I don't suppose it would have told me much. But it was a long time ahead—perhaps twenty thousand years, perhaps fifty thousand, perhaps more—I don't know. What I do know is that this man wasn't anybody very important, just a sort of minor assistant in some kind of laboratory where they specialized in time experiments, quite a low-class fellow among his own kind, though he would have seemed a demigod to me and you. And I knew that while he was so terrified that he was frantic in his attempt to escape, at the same time he was ashamed of himself, too—felt he was a kind of dodger, you see. But even then, what was happening was so ghastly that he'd never hesitated at all. He had run to the laboratory or whatever it was, and just had time to jump back through the ages. He was in terror. He didn't show it as we might, but I tell you—his mind was screaming. Some place—a city, I think it was—had been entirely destroyed and everything else was going too, everything that had once been human. No words came into my mind to describe what it was that was destroying everything and terrifying him. Perhaps I hadn't any words that would fit in. All I got were some little pictures, very blurred, just like bits of a nightmare. There were great black things rolling about, just wiping everything out. Not like anything you've ever seen. You couldn't give them a shape."

Here Mr. Strenberry leaned further forward still, grasped my coat-sleeve, and lowered his voice.

"They weren't beasts or huge insects even," he whispered. "They weren't anything you could put a name to. I don't believe they belonged to this world at all. And something he thought rather suggested that too. They came from some other place, from another planet perhaps. Don't you see, it was all finished here. They were blotting it out, great rolling black things—oh, horrible! Just imagine what he felt, this man, who had just managed to escape from them, but now couldn't get out, into this world and time of ours. Because he couldn't, that was the awful thing. He tried and tried, but it couldn't be done. And he hadn't long to try either, I knew that. Because of what was happening at the other end, you see. I tell you, I stood there, looking at him, with his thoughts buzzing round my own head, and the sweat was streaming down my face. I was terrified too, in a panic. And then he was in an agony of fear, and so was I. It was all up. The inside of that column of air began revolving again, just as it had done when it first came, and then I couldn't see him distinctly. Only his eyes. Just those eyes, staring out of the swirl. And then, I saw something. I swear I did. Something black. Just a glimpse. That's all. A bit of one of those things, getting hold of him—the last man left. That's
what it must have been, though how I came to see it, I don't quite
know, but I've worked it out this way and that way, and it seems to
me "

"A-ha, who have we here?" cried a loud, cheerful voice. "How's things, Mr. Strenberry?"

Two red-faced men had just entered the room. They grinned at my companion, then winked at one another.

"A nasty day, Mr. Strenberry," said the other fellow. "What do you say?"

Mr. Strenberry, who appeared to have crumpled up at their approach, merely muttered something in reply. Then, giving me a hasty glance, in which shame and despair and scorn were mingled, he suddenly rose and shuffled out of the room.

The two newcomers looked at one another, laughed, and then settled into their comer. The landlady appeared with their drinks. I stood up and looked out of the window. The downpour had dwindled to a few scattered drops, brightening in the sunlight.

"I seen you talking to Mr. Strenberry," the landlady said to me. "Least, I seen him talking to you. Got him going, too, you did. He's a queer one, isn't he? Didn't I tell you he was a queer one? Telling you one of his tales, I'll be bound. Take no notice of him, mister. You can't believe a single word he says. We found that out long since. That's why he doesn't want to talk to us any more. He knows we've got a pinch of salt ready, Mr. Strenberry does."

From YViddershins, by Oliver Onions, reprinted by permission of Martin Seeker & Warburg and A. P. Watt & Son.

Pnantas

By OLIVER ONIONS

For, barring all pother, With this, or the other, Still Britons arc Lords of the Main.

The Chapter of Admirals

AS ABEL KEELING LAY ON THE GALLEON'S DECK, HELD FROM ROLLING

down it only by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung, jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel Keeling's eyes liked.

For wherever else on the galleon his eyes rested they found only whiteness—the whiteness of extreme eld. There were slightly varying degrees in her whiteness; here she was of a white that glistened like salt-granules, there of a greyish chalky white, and again her whiteness had the yellowish cast of decay; but everywhere it was the mild, disquieting whiteness of materials out of which the life had departed. Her cordage was bleached as old straw is bleached, and half her ropes kept their shape little more firmly than the ash of a string keeps its shape after the fire has passed; her pallid timbers were white and clean as bones found in sand; and even the wild frankincense with which (for lack of tar, at her last touching of land) she had been pitched had dried to a pale hard gum that sparkled like quartz in her open seams. The sun was yet so pale a buckler of silver through the still white mists that not a cord or timber cast a shadow; and only Abel Keeling's face and hands were black, carked and cinder-black from exposure to his pitiless rays.

The galleon was the Mary of the Tower, and she had a frightful list to starboard. So canted was she that her mainyard dipped one of its steel sickles into the glassy water, and, had her foremast remained, or more than the broken stump of her bonaventure mizzen, she must have turned over completely. Many days ago they had stripped the mainyard of its course, and had passed the sail under the Mary's bottom, in the hope that it would stop the leak. This it had partly done as long as the galleon had continued to guide one way; then, without coming about, she had begun to glide the other, the ropes had parted, and she had dragged the sail after her, leaving a broad tarnish on the silver sea.

For it was broadside that the galleon glided, almost imperceptibly, ever sucking down. She glided as if a loadstone drew her, and, at first, Abel Keeling had thought it was a loadstone, pulling at her iron, drawing her through the pearly mists that lay like face-cloths to the water and hid at a short distance the tarnish left by the sail. But later he had known that it was no loadstone drawing at her iron. The motion was due—must be due—to the absolute deadncss of the calm in that silent, sinister, three-miles-broad waterway. With the eye of his mind he saw that loadstone now as he lay against a gun-truck, all but toppling down the deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past. He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the Mary over the quicksilver sea, and once more the sheer wall of rock would rise, and the men would run. . . .

But no; the men would not run this time to drop the fenders. There were no men left to do so, unless Bligh was still alive. Perhaps Bligh was still alive. He had walked halfway down the quarter-deck steps a little before the sudden nightfall of the day before, had then fallen and lain for a minute (dead, Abel Keeling had supposed, watching him from his place by the gun-truck), and had then got up again and tottered forward to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his

The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted. Bligh was alive, at any rate. . . . Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.

Yes, that was the Law of Bligh's life, to call things the Hand of God; but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if he sought the method there. . . .

Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was without obvious connection.

Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms. Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God filled the sail)—oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a battle-formation abreast to give effect to the shock of the ram, and a day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions. Oars . . . no. Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the line-ahead, the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would devise a craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the remote seas of the world)—not sail-driven (because men who trusted to sails found themselves in an airless, three-mile strait, suspended motionless between cloud and water, ever gliding to a wall of rock)—but a ship ... a ship. . . .

"To Noah and his sons with him God spake, and thus said He: A cov'nant set I up with you And your posterity—"

It was Bligh again, wandering somewhere in the waist. Abel Keeling's mind was once more a blank. Then slowly, slowly, as the water drops collected on the collar of rope, his thought took shape again:

A galliasse? No, not a galliasse. The galliasse made shift to be two things, and was neither. This ship, that the hand of man should one day make for the Hand of God to manage, should be a ship that should take and conserve the force of the wind, take it and store it as she stored her victuals; at rest when she wished, going ahead when she wished; turning the forces both of calm and storm against themselves. For, of course, her force must be wind—stored wind—a bag of the winds, as the children's tale had it—wind probably directed upon the water astern, driving it away and urging forward the ship, acting by reaction. She would have a wind-chamber, into which wind would be pumped with pumps. . . . Bligh would call that equally the Hand of God, this driving force of the ship of the future that Abel Keeling dimly fore-shadowed as he lay between the mainmast and the belfry, turning his eyes now and then from the ashy white timbers to the vivid green bronze-rust of the bell above him. . . .

Bligh's face, liver-coloured with the sun and ravaged from inwards by the faith that consumed him, appeared at the head of the quarterdeck steps. His voice beat uncontrolledly out.

"And in the earth here is no place Of refuge to be found, Nor in the deep and water-course That passeth under ground—"

Bligh's eyes were lidded, as if in contemplation of his inner ecstasy. His head was thrown back, and his brows worked up and down tor-mentedly. His wide mouth remained open as his hymn was suddenly interrupted on the long-drawn note. From somewhere in the shimmering mists the note was taken up, and there drummed and rang and reverberated through the strait a windy, hoarse, and dismal bellow, alarming and sustained. A tremor rang through Bligh. Moving like a sightless man, he stumbled forward from the head of the quarter-deck steps, and Abel Keeling was aware of his gaunt figure behind him, taller for the steepness of the deck. As that vast empty sound died away, Bligh laughed in his mania.

"Lord, hath the grave's wide mouth a tongue to praise Thee? Lo,
again---- "

Again the cavernous sound possessed the air, louder and nearer.

Through it came another sound, a slow throb, throb—throb, throb

Again the sounds ceased.

"Even Leviathan lifted up his voice in praise!" Bligh sobbed.

Abel Keeling did not raise his head. There had returned to him the memory of that day when, before the morning mists had lifted from the strait, he had emptied the pipkin of the water that was the allowance until night should fall again. During that agony of thirst he had seen shapes and heard sounds with other than his mortal eyes and ears, and even in the moments that had alternated with his lightness, when he had known these to be hallucinations, they had come again. He had heard the bells on a Sunday in his own Kentish home, the calling of children at play, the unconcerned singing of men at their daily labour, and the laughter and gossip of the women as they had spread the linen on the hedge or distributed bread upon the platters. These voices had rung in his brain, interrupted now and then by the groans of Bligh and of two other men who had been alive then. Some of the voices he had heard had been silent on earth this many a long year, but Abel Keeling, thirst-tortured, had heard them, even as he was now hearing that vacant moaning with the intermittent throbbing that filled the strait with alarm. . . .

"Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!" Bligh was calling deliriously.

Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his fancy—the scene when the Mary of the Tower had put out, to a bravery of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the warpavesse about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet say, and from her mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it. . . .

Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "And a half-
seven—and a half-seven--- " and in a twink the picture in Abel

Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son, young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out of the harbour.

"And a half-seven/" the boy seemed to be calling.

Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel, excellently well cast!"

"And a half-seven—and a half-seven—seven—seven "

"Ah," Abel Keeling murmured, "that last was not a clear cast—give me the line—thus it should go . . . ay, so. . . . Soon you shall sail the seas with me in the Mary of the Tower. You are already perfect in the stars and the motions of the planets; to-morrow I will instruct you in the use of the backstaff. . . ."

For a minute or two he continued to mutter; then he dozed. When again he came to semi-consciousness it was once more to the sound of bells, at first faint, then louder, and finally becoming a noisy clamour immediately above his head. It was Bligh. Bligh, in a fresh attack of delirium, had seized the bell-lanyard and was ringing the bell insanely. The cord broke in his fingers, but he thrust at the bell with his hand, and again called aloud.

"Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings ... let Heaven and Earth praise Thy Name! . . ."

He continued to call aloud, and to beat on the bronze-rusted bell.

"Ship ahoy.' What ship's that?"

One would have said that a veritable hail had come out of the mists; but Abel Keeling knew those hails that came out of mists. They came from ships which were not there. "Ay, ay, keep a good look-out, and have a care to your lode-manage," he muttered again to his son. . . .

But, as sometimes a sleeper sits up in his dream, or rises from his couch and walks, so all of a sudden Abel Keeling found himself on his hands and knees on the deck, looking back over his shoulder. In some deep-seated region of his consciousness he was dimly aware that the cant of the deck had become more perilous, but his brain received the intelligence and forgot it again. He was looking out into the bright and baffling mists. The buckler of the sun was of a more ardent silver; the sea below it was lost in brilliant evaporation; and between them, suspended in the haze, no more substantial than the vague darknesses that float before dazzled eyes, a pyramidal phantom-shape hung. Abel Keeling passed his hand over his eyes, but when he removed it the shape was still there, gliding slowly towards the Mary's quarter. Its form changed as he watched it. The spirit-grey shape that had been a pyramid seemed to dissolve into four upright members, slightly graduated in tallness, that nearest the Mary's stern the tallest and that to the left the lowest. It might have been the shadow of the gigantic set

of reed-pipes on which that vacant mournful note had been sounded. And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled: "Ahoy there.' What ship's that? Are you a ship? . . . Here, give mc

that trumpet----- " Then a metallic barking. "Ahoy there/ What the

devil are you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something, and go dead slow!"

All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.

"Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. J want to know if I'm awake." "See where?"

"There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that damned Dutchman—don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale—give me an easy one Eist, something about a sea-serpent. . . . You did hear that bell, didn't you?"

"Shut up a minute—listen---- "

Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.

"This is the cov'nant that I make: From henceforth nevermore Will I again the world destroy With water, as before."

Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.

"Oh—my—fat—Aunt—Julia!" the voice that seemed to come from between sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. "I say," it began with careful politeness, "if you are a ship, do you mind telling us where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we hadn't heard of it. . . . Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you? . . . Please, please tell us what the hell you are/"

Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleep-walker moves. He had raised himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still and brimming sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved balustrade of the quarter-deck—one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark baluster, and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head—the waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken the form of a pyramid before his eyeballs.

"Of course," a voice seemed to be complaining anew, and still through that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, "we can't turn a four-inch on it. . . . And, of course, Ward, J don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward? I don't believe in 'em, I say. . . . Shall we call down to old A.B.? This might interest His Scientific Skipper-ship. . . ."

"Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it—into it—over it—through
it----- "

"Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it. Better not give an order you know won't he obeyed. . . ."

Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was in the shape of a ship. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on ships of half an hour before; and that was odd. . . . But perhaps, after all, it was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they really existed. Before the Mary of the Tower had existed she had been a shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed the form of a ship with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean of his own mind. . . .

"And I will not unmindful be Of this, My cov'nant, passed Twixt Me and you and every flesh Whiles that the world should last,"

sang Bligh, rapt. . . .

But as a dreamer, even in his dreams, will scratch upon the wall by his couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought that—could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there, uttering great passionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested from the chaos of uninven-tion and ordered and disciplined and subordinated to Abel Keeling's will. . . . And there she was, that ship-shaped thing of spirit-grey, with the four pipes that resembled a phantom organ now broadside and of equal length. And the ghost-crew of that ship were speaking again. . . .

The interrupted silver chain by the quarter-deck balustrade had now become continuous, and the balusters made a herring-bone over their own motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect as God made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He waited for the space of a minute, and then cried:

"Ahoy! . . . Ship ahoy! . . . What ship's that?"

We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling's a voice replied:

"Hallo, it's found its tongue. . . . Ahoy there.' What are you?"

Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: "Are you a ship?"

With a nervous giggle the answer came:

"We are a ship, aren't we, Ward? I hardly feel sure. . . . Yes, of course, we're a ship. No question about us. The question is what the dickens you are."

Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel

Keeling, and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded him of the honour due to the Mary of the Tower. Blister-white and at the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.

"You that spoke—are you the master of that ship?"

"Officer of the watch," the words floated back; "the captain's below."

"Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech," Abel Keeling replied.

He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring, as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Reeling's frame. He wondered what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of his memory. . . .

"Ahoy!" seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. "What's all this about? Listen. We're His Majesty's destroyer Sea-pink, out of Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now who are you?"

"The Mary of the Tower, out of the Port of Rye on the day of
Saint Anne, and only two men---- "

A gasp interrupted him.

"Out of where?" that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.

"Out of the Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex . . . nay, give ear, else I cannot make you hear me while this man's spirit and flesh wrestle so together! . . . Ahoy! Are you gone?" For the voices had become a low murmur, and the ship-shape had faded before Abel Keeling's eyes. Again and again he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the wind-chamber. . . .

"The wind-chamber!" he called, in an agony lest the knowledge almost within his grasp should be lost. "I would know about the wind-chamber . . ."

Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, "The wind-chamber? . . ."

". . . that driveth the vessel—perchance 'tis not wind—a steel bow that is bent also conserveth force—the force you store, to move at will through calm and storm. . . ."

"Can you make out what it's driving at?"

"Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute. . . ."

"Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines. It'll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port.' . . . Well, no harm in humoring it; let's see what it can make of this. Ahoy there/" came the voice to Abel Keeling, a little strongly, as if a shifting wind carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. "Not wind; but steam; d'you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we've twin-screw triple expansion engines, indicated horsepower four thousand, and we can do 430 revolutions per minute; sawy? Is there anything your phantomhood would like to know about our armament? . . ."

Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The Seapink—that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and narrow, low-carged and square-built aft. . . .

"And as for our armament," the voice with the tones that so profoundly troubled Abel Keeling's memory continued, "we've two revolving Whitehead torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that's a twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention that we're nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tons in most damnably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our top. Care to come aboard?"

But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that was uttering it was straining forward anxiously over the rail.

"Ugh! But I'm glad this happened in the daylight," another voice was muttering.

"I wish I was sure it was happening at all. . . . Poor old spook/" "I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think she'll go down, or just melt?" "Kind of go down . . . without wash . . ."

"Listen—here's the other one now--------- "

For Bligh was singing again:

"For, Lord, Thou know'st our nature such

If we great things obtain And in the getting of the same

Do feel no grief or pain, We little do esteem thereof;

But, hardly brought to pass, A thousand times we do esteem

More than the other was—"

"But oh, look—look—look at the other! . . . Oh, I say, wasn't he a grand old boy.' Look!"

For, transfiguring Abel Keeling's form as a prophet's form is transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future, as if God's Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously, completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course." From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he knew her—read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows, for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there would be no morrow for him in this world. . . .

And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his glass, indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.

"Ho, there! . . . This ancient ship, the Mary of the Tower, cannot steam thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air soar?"

"Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane.' . . . No, she can't. . . ."

"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"

"No. . . . Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine. . . ."

But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.

"Oho, oho—thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters—no more than that? Oho! . . . Now my ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown the child she has but conceived—my ship I say—oho! —my ship . . . Below there—trip that gun!"

The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and an ominous tremor shook the galleon.

"By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below—that's her finish-- "

"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.

"Ho—he that spoke with me—the master," he cried in a voice that ran high, "is he there?"

"Yes, yes.'" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense. "Oh, be quick!"

There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.

"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice I know. What is your name?"

In a torn sob the answer came across the water:

"Keeling-Abel Keeling. ... Oh, my God.'"

And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!" was lost in the downward plunge of the Mary of the Tower, that left the strait empty save for the sun's fiery blaze and the last smoke-like evaporation of the mists.

From Fearful Pleasures, by A. £. Coppard, reprinted by permission of Arkham House, Publishers.

Tke Homeless One

By A. E. COPPARD

Near the northeast corner of the county of Huntingdon lies a small town which once nourished an asylum for the care, retention, or reclamation of the possessed, in other words a madhouse, and within its walls dwelt an old man who had no name. So long had he been immured there that no one remembered his coming; so aged was he that no kindred were left to care for him; so quiet and well-behaved that he might have been proclaimed as a model of madhouse welfare. No record existed of when, how or why he was so incarcerated, he himself did not know, he was there, he had always been there. Where he came from, how brought, to whom he belonged, were alike unknown. A slight tang of foreignness hung about him, hard to define, and it was his lunatic whim to claim that he was now a ghost, having once upon a time hung himself because of some wickedness he had done in the far-back years. Poor old ninny! That he had now no name was his special grievance; it had been stolen from him—so he averred—in the far-back ages long ago, but if pressed about the circumstances of this misappropriation he at times grew anguished and demented, at other times he would be cunning and defensive.

Among the inmates was one with whom he became as intimate as their poor minds allowed, a cobbler with one eye, who in happier days had been a wayside preacher. Old too, though not so old as the

unknown, he was even madder, and having appointed himself to the post of Clerk to the Great Assize he trounced his comrade with harsh comminations.

"What is your name, please, what is your name? Speak up, what is your name?"

The man without a name would reply, "Infamy," this having been commended to him by the one-eyed one who insisted on a designation of some sort.

"It must go in, it must go in the pleadings, you understand. Come now, state your crime, state your crime, let us hear it all."

The other would answer, "Wickedness."

"Ah, take care, my lord defendant, I am warning you!"

"Wickedness, Sir."

"Was you guilty or not guilty? Speak up and shame the devil." Then the poor wretch would sigh, "Only the ghost of it, Sir, only the ghost."

"Come, come, now!" the cobbler would threaten; "Your insides are naked; do you wear your heart in a nightgown or your tongue in a canister?"

"Only the ghost of it," would be the hazed reply.

That was the general gist and limit of the cross-examination, but the mad cobbler would rehearse him again and again until the culprit confessed to having hung himself, on a tree, in an orchard, and imploringly added: "Forgive me again, aye, but this once and no more. Amen."

In this matter, although the poor wretch could remember nothing else, his grim recollection had some truth in it; not the whole truth, but truth as far as it could range in his benighted soul. For once upon a time, in an age dropped far under the horizon of his years, he had thought to commit suicide.

What an agony of mind must have dogged one who thus incurs eternal damnation! To be so stricken that an infinity of torment, in whatever guise to follow, would seem to be a lesser evil! For if ease is not to be attained here, why should it be found there—or anywhere? Howbeit, this fellow had fastened rope to tree, drawn noose upon neck, had leapt to his doom, and at the crunch which severed soul from body his soul had launched into space with the ferocity of a rocket searching the sky, but searching without sound.