Classic Audiobook Collection - The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram ~ Full Audiobook [horror]

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram audiobook. Genre: horror To get away from city life periodically, New Yorker Roger Locke purchases an abandoned farm house in rural Connecticut, and with the assistance of his cousin Phillida and her beau Ethan Vere, he sets about fixing up the place. Immediately however, an unseen mysterious woman begins giving him warnings during nocturnal visits to leave the house at once. Soon he begins hearing strange ominous sounds emanating from the tiny lake at the back of the house coupled with a permeation of sickly odors. An evil presence then begins to visit him during the witching hours of the late night, challenging him to a battle of wits from which there can be only one victor. Is his mysterious female visitor there to help and encourage him to flee from the house, or is she working in tandem with The Thing From the Lake? A gripping, occasionally frightening tale, Ms. Ingram wastes no time in grabbing the reader into the story and manages to weave a tale that will leave the reader guessing at every turn of events. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:10:02) Chapter 02 (00:37:37) Chapter 03 (01:38:46) Chapter 04 (01:43:38) Chapter 05 (01:56:34) Chapter 06 (02:17:06) Chapter 07 (02:43:05) Chapter 08 (02:49:52) Chapter 09 (03:01:27) Chapter 10 (03:23:41) Chapter 11 (03:45:15) Chapter 12 (04:00:55) Chapter 13 (04:24:06) Chapter 14 (04:35:30) Chapter 15 (05:05:35) Chapter 16 (05:43:45) Chapter 17 (06:00:08) Chapter 18 (06:22:44) Chapter 19 (06:57:15) Chapter 20 (07:04:59) Chapter 21 (07:17:22) Chapter 22 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter i as well give up the bible at once as our belief in apparitions wesley the house cried out to me for help in the after knowledge i now possess of what was to happen there that impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of the place let me at once set down that this is not the story of a haunted house it is or was a beleaguered house strangely besieged as was prague in the old legend when a midnight army of spectres unfurled pale banners and encamped around the city walls of course i did not know all this the day that my real estate agent brought me his little car to a stop before the dilapidated farm i believed the house only appealed to be lived in for deliverance from the destroying work of neglect and time a spring rain was whispering down from a gray sky dripping from broken gutters and eaves with a patter like timid footsteps hurrying by yet even in the storm the house did not look dreary there mr locke is a bargain the agent called back to me where i sat in my car finest bid in connecticut for a city man's summer home woodland farmland lake and a house that only needs a few repairs to be up to date look at that double row of maples sir shade all summer fine old orchard too with a trifle of attention i nodded surveying the house with an eagerness of interest that surprised myself

a box-like fairly large structure of commonplace new england ugliness it coaxed my liking as had no other place i had ever seen it wooed me like a determined woman and as one would long to clothe beautifully a beloved woman i looked at the house and foresaw what an architect could do for it how creamy stucco broad white porches and a gay scarlet roof would transform it come inside my agent urged hope in his voice as he observed my face let me show you the interior i brought the keys along of course the rooms may seem a bit musty no one has lived in it for some time it's the old mitchell property been in the family for a couple hundred years last mitchell is dead now and it's being sold for the benefit of some religious institute the old mitchell property been in the family for a couple of hundred years last mitchell is dead now and it's being sold for the benefit of some religious institute the old gentleman left it too. Trifle wet to walk over the land today, but I have a plan and measurements in my portfolio. I said that we would go in. If he had but known the fact, the place was already sold to me before I left my car, before I entered the house, before I had seen the hundred-odd acres that make up the estate. There was a narrow, flagged path to the veranda where the planking moved

and creaked under our weight while my companion unlocked the front door rather astonishingly the air of the long-closed place was neither musty nor damp when we stepped in instead there was a faint resinous odor very pleasant and clean perhaps from the cedar of which the woodwork largely consisted the house was partially furnished not of course with much what i would care to retain, but a few good antiques stood out among their commonplace associates. A large bedroom on the north side, which I appointed as my own at first sight, held an old rosewood set, including a four-posted pineapple-carved bed. I threw open the shutters in this room and looked out. I received the first jar to my satisfaction. On this side of the place, the grounds ran down a slight slope for perhaps half a block to the five-acre hollow of shallow water and lush growth, which the agent called a lake. From it flowed a considerable creek, winding behind the house and

away on its journey to the sound. For that underwater marsh I felt a shock of violent dislike. You don't care for the lake, my companion deprecated at my elbow. "'Find trout in that stream, though. "'I'd like you to see it in the sunshine.' "'I should care more for it if it was a lake, not a swamp,' I answered. "'Oh, but that is only because the old dam is down,' he exclaimed eagerly. "'That lets all the water out, you see. "'Why, if the dam were put back, you'd have as pretty a lake for a canoe as there is in the state.

"'It's natural depth as four or five feet all over.' and about eight or ten where the stream flows through to the dam. Even yet, a few wild ducks stopped there spring and fall, and when I was a boy, I've seen heron. Put back the dam, Mr. Locke, and I'll guarantee you'll never say swamp again. We will try it, I said. Now let us find a lawyer and see how quickly I can be put in possession. We drove back to the little town for the little town,

from which we had that morning started out, and where my agent lived, my sleek car following his small one with somewhat the effect of a long-limbed panther striding behind an agitated mouse. It appeared that the sale was simply consummated. I do not mean that all the formalities were completed in a day, but by nightfall I could feel myself the owner of the place. perhaps it was the giddiness of being a landowner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner.

I had spent one night here and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable because I had arranged to meet several contractors and an architect at the farm next morning to discuss the alterations I wanted made. Why not drive out to my new house this evening and sleep tonight in the rosewood furnished bedroom? The idea gained favor as I contemplated it.

I could go over the house tonight and sketch more clearly what I wanted done while I would be on the ground when my men arrived next morning. There was an allure of camping out about it, too. in the end i went of course it was dark when i stabled my roadster in the barn that was part of my new possessions where the car seemed to glitter disdain of the hay littered ragged shelter equipped with a flashlight suit-case and bundle i followed a faint path that wound its way to the house through wet blackberry vines whose thorns had outlived the winter my steps broke the blank silence that brooded over the place at this season there was no insect life nor any other stirring thing within hearing or sight but just as i stepped upon the veranda i heard a vague sound from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the north there was no wind yet the water had seemed to move with a sound like the smacking of soft glutinous lips

or as if some soft body drew itself from a bed of clinging mud i wondered idly if the tide could run this far back from long island sound the house reiterated the impression of welcoming me i shut and locked the old door behind me and went up to the room i had chosen as my own there i unsuttered and opened the windows lighted one of the candles i had brought and set it on a little bookcase filled with dingy volumes and threw my blankets on the bed i had moved in my pleasant sense of proprietorship continued to grow before i thought of sleep i had been through the house several times from cellar to attic and accumulated a list of things to be done back in my room an hour passed in revising the list by candlelight near ten o'clock i rolled myself in a dressing-gown and my blankets spread an automobile roll over the four-posted bed and fell asleep. End of Chapter 1. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 2 of The Thing from the Lake. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram. Chapter 2. Beware of her fair hair, for she excels all women in the magic of her locks. shelley translated it trailed suavely through my fingers slipping across my palm like a belt of silk it glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight quite naturally even in the dazed moment of awakening i closed my hand upon it it was soft in my grasp yet resilient solid yet supple if i may speak irrationally it felt as if it must be fragrant it was a strange visitor to my experience yet i recognized its identity unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a bird in brief it was it only could be an opulent braid of hair when i grasped it it ceased to move in the dense darkness of my bedroom i lay still and considered

i was alone or rather should have been alone in the old house i had bought the day before the agent assured me that it had been unoccupied for years who then was my guest a passer-by seeking refuge in a supposedly deserted house would hardly have moved about with such silent caution a tramp of this genus would be a rarity indeed i had nothing with me of value to attract a thief the usual limited masculine jewelry a watch a pair of cuff links a modest pin surely were not sufficiently tempting to snare so dainty a bird of prey as one wearing a such plumage as I held. I have not a small fist, yet that braid was a generous handful. How did it come to trail across my bed, in any case? And why was its owner locked in silence and immobility? Surely, startled innocence would have cried out, questioned my grasp, or struggled against it. My captive did neither. I began to paint a picture again. I began to paint a picture the darkness, the picture of a crouching woman, fear paralyzed, not daring to stir, to sob,

or pant or shiver lest she betray herself, or, perhaps, a woman who is not hushed by panic, but by deliberation. A woman who slowly leveled a weapon, assuring her aim in the blank darkness by such guides as my breathing, and the taught direction of her imprisoned tresses. An ugly woman could not have hair such as this, or could she? I had a doubtful recollection of various long-haired demonstrators glimpsed in drug-shop windows, who were not beautiful. Yes, but they would never have found themselves in such a situation as this one. Only resolve or recklessness could bring a woman to such a pass,

and with spirit and this hair, no woman could. could be ugly. How quiet she was! I suddenly reflected that she must be thinking the same thing of me, since neither of us had moved during a considerable space of time. Possibly she fancied me only half aroused, and hoped that I would relapse into sleep without realizing upon what my drowsy grasp had closed.

No doubt it would have been the course of chivalry for me to pretend to do so, but it was not the course of curiosity the deadlock could not last indefinitely apparently though it must be i who should break it as quietly as possible i brought my left hand forward to grope along that silken line which certainly must guide me to the intruder herself my hand slipped along the smooth surface to the full reach of my arm and and countered nothing check for the first attempt the candle and matches i had bought in the village were also beyond my reach unless i released my captive and rolled across the bed toward the little bookcase where i had placed them beside the flashlight if i should speak what would she do and-a new thought was she alone in the house there came a gentle draw at the braid in her instantly ceasing as I automatically tightened my hold. The pretense that I slapped was ended. I spoke as soothingly and kindly as I could manage.

If you will let me strike a light, we can explain to each other. Or, if you will agree not to escape? In spite of my efforts, my voice boomed startlingly through the dark, still room. No reply followed, but the brain. quivered and suddenly relaxed from its tension she must have come closer to me delighted by so much success attained and intrigued by the novelty of the adventure i moved slightly stretching my free arm in the direction of the flashlight i am not a difficult person i essayed encouragement nor too dull i hope to understand a mistake or a necessity nor am i affiliated with the police Please. Permit me—I halted abruptly. A cool edge of metal had been laid across the wrist of my groping hand.

As the hand came to rest, palm uppermost, I could feel, or imagined I could feel, my pulse beating steadily against the menacing pressure of the blade. The warning was eloquent and sufficient. I moved no further toward my flashlight. of course if i had lifted my right hand from its guard of the braid i could easily have pinioned the arm which poised the knife before i suffered much harm but i might have lost my captive in the attempt an event for which i was not ready yet check i admitted although it is rather near a stalemate for us both isn't it the knife pressed closer suggestively no i dissented with the mute argument i think not i do not believe you could do it not in cold blood anyway you do not know insisted the closer pressing blade as if with a tongue no i do not know i translated aloud but i am confident enough to chance it what reason have you for desperate action i would not harm you

have i not a right to curiosity this is my house you know or perhaps you did not know that a sigh stirred the silence blending with the ceaseless whisper of the rain that had recommenced through the night the braid did not move in my right hand nor did the blade touching my left speak i begged with an abrupt urgency that surprised myself you are the invader why what would you have for me if i am to let you go at least speak to me first this is uncanny there is magic in the third time of asking came a breathed just audible whisper yet be warned call not to you that which you may neither hold nor forbid but i do call if that will make you speak to me i returned my pulses tingling triumph although as to not holding you you fancy you hold me it is not you who are master of this moment but i who am its mistress her voice had gained in strength a soft voice yet not weak used with a delicate deliberation that gave her speech her speech yet not weak used with a delicate deliberation that gave her speech the effect of being a caprice of her own rather than a result of my compulsion. Yet, I thought, she must be crouched or kneeling beside me on the floor,

held like the lady of the beautiful tresses. Still, I doubt if you have the disposition to use your advantage, I began. You mean the cruelty, she corrected me. I am from New York, I smiled. let me say the nerve if you pressed that knife i might bleed to death you know would you hear a story of a woman of my house and her anger before you doubt too far tell me i consented and smiled in the darkness at the transparent plan to distract my attention from that imprisoned braid she was silent for so long that i fancied the plan abandoned perhaps for lack of a tale to tell then her voice leaped suddenly out of the blackness that closed us in speaking always in muted tones but with a strange impassioned urgency and force that startled like a cry the words hurried upon one another like breaking surf see see the fire leaps in the chimney it breathed sparks like a dreadful beast it is hungry it's very it's very

its red tongues lick for that which they may not yet have already its breath is hot upon the wax image on the hearth but the image is round of limb and sound yes though it is but toy large it is perfect and firm see how it stands in the red shine the image of a man cunningly made to show his stalwartness and strength and bravery of velvet and lace. The image of a great man, surely, one high in place and power. One above fear and beyond the reach of hate. The woman sits in her low chair, behind the image. The fire shine is bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side her hair flows down to the floor. Her eyes look on the image and are dreadfully glad. Ha! Was not beauty the lure?

And shall it not be the vengeance? The nine lamps have been lighted. The feathers have been laid in a circle. The spell has been broken. The spell of high, son of set, first man to slay man by the dark art. The man is at the door of the woman's house. Yes,

he who came in pride to woo and prove traitor to the love won he is at her door in weakness and pain as the wax wastes the man wastes as the mannackin is gone the man dies on her doorstep he begs for life he is coward and broken he suffers and is consumed he calls to her love he calls to her the love-name he is coward and broken he suffers and is consumed he calls to her the love-name they both know and the woman laughs and the door is barred the door is barred but what shall bar out the enemy who creeps to the nine lamps see the fire shines through the wax the image is grown thin and wan three days three nights it has shrunk before the flames three days three nights it has shrunk before the flames three days three nights the lights the woman has watched. As the fire is not weary, she is not weary. As the fire is beautiful, she is beautiful. The man is born to her door again. He lifts up his hands and cries to her, but now he begs for death. Now he knows anguish stronger than fear. And the woman laughs, and the door is barred.

The fire shines on a lump of wax. The man is dead. From her chair, the woman has arisen and stands triumphant. But what crouch is behind her, unseen? The lamps are cast down. The pentagram is crossed. The horror takes its own. The impassioned speech broke off with the effect of a snapped bar of thin metal.

in the silence the steady whisper of rain came to my ears again continuing patiently i became aware of a rich yet delicate fragrance in the air i breathed it was not any perfume i could identify either as a composition or as a flower scent if i may hope to be understood it sparkled upon the senses it produced a thirst for itself so that it produced a thirst for itself so that that the nostrils expanded for it with an eagerness for the new pleasure i found myself breathing deeply almost greedily before answering my prisoner's story sister helen i quoted as lightly as i could and do you think rossetti had no truth to base his poem upon her quiet voice flowed out of the darkness seeming scarcely the same speech as the swift irregular utterance of a moment before. Do you think that all the traditions and learning of the younger world meant nothing? Are you asking me to believe in witchcraft and sorcery? I ask nothing.

Not even to believe that you will press the knife if I refuse to free you? Not even that, now? Compunction smote me. Her voice sounded more faint, as if from fatigue or discouragement. It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in position.

I seemed to read my lady's weariness in the slackened vigilance. Perhaps she was really frightened, now that her brave attempt to lull me into in caution had failed. Listen, please, I spoke earnestly. I am going to go. to set you free. I apologize for keeping you captive so long, but you will admit the provocation

to my curiosity. You will forgive me? A sigh drifted across the darkness. I asked no questions, I urged, but will you not trust me to make a light and give what help I can? You are welcome to use the house as you please. Or, if you are lost, or stormbound my car is in the old barn and i will drive you anywhere that you say let us not spoil our adventure by suspicion in good faith i opened my hand releasing the lovely rope by which i had detained my prisoner then with a quickening pulse i waited would she stay would she spring up and escape would she thank me or would she reply with some eccentricity unpredictable as her whim to tell me that tale she did none of these things the braid of hair freed entirely continued to lie supinely across my open palm the coolness of the blade still lightly touched my wrist she might be debating her course of action i reflected well i was in no haste to conclude the episode when the silence had lasted many moments however i began to grow restive

anxiety tinged my speculations suppose she had fainted or did she doubt my intentions and was her quietness that of one on guard i stirred tentatively two things happened simultaneously with my movement the braid glided away from me while the knife slipped from its position and tinkled upon the floor i started up perception of the truth seizing my slow wits and reached for my flashlight there was no one in the room except myself down my blanket was slipping a severed braid of hair perhaps a foot in length jaggedly cut across at the end farthest from my hand. Leaning over, I saw on the floor beside the bed a paper knife of my own, a sharp, serviceable tool that formed part of my writing kit. Before going to bed, I had taken it from my suitcase to trim a candle-wick and had left it upon the bookstand.

Now I understood why her voice had sounded more distant, then seemed reasonable while I held her beside me. No doubt she had hacked off the detaining braid almost as soon as I grasped it. The knife she had pressed against my wrist was to keep me where I lay while she made ready for flight, or amused herself with me.

Flight? Say rather that she had leisurely withdrawn. Perhaps she had not even heard my magnanimous speech offering her the freedom that she already possessed. If she had stayed to hear me, probably she had laughed. Perhaps she was still in the house. I rose and lighted a candle under the impulsion of that idea, reserving my flashlight for the search.

But there was no one in any of the dusty, sparsely furnished rooms and halls through which I hunted. The ancient locks on doors and windows were fastened as I had left them, although my lady certainly had entered and left at her pleasure. Puzzled and amused, I finally returned to my bedchamber. There was some difference in that room. I was conscious of the fact as soon as I entered and closed the door behind me. The candle still burned where I had left it, flickering slightly in some kind of.

of air. There was no change that the eye could find, no sound except the rain, yet I felt an extreme reluctance to go on even a step from where I stood. What I wanted to do was to tear open the door behind me, to rush out into the hall and slam the door shut between this room and myself. Why? I looked around me, sending the beam of the flashlight playing, over the quiet place. Nothing, of course. I walked over to the bookcase, took up the braid I had left there, and sat down in an old armchair to study my trophy. On principle, and by habit, I had no intention of being mastered by nerves. It was humiliating to discover that I could be made nervous by the mere fact of being in an unoccupied farmhouse after midnight.

The braid was magnificent. It was as broad as my palm, yet compressed so tightly that it was thick and solid to the touch. If released over someone's shoulders, it would have been a sumptuous cloak, indeed. In what madness of panic had the girl's sacrifice this beauty? How she must hate me! me now the panic was past the color too was unique in my experience a gold as vivid as auburn or was it tinged with auburn

as i leaned forward to catch the candle-light a drift of that fragrance worn by my visitor floated from her braid at once i knew what had changed in the room the air that had been so pure when the house was opened now was heavy with an order of damp and mould that had seeped into the atmosphere as moisture will seep through cellar walls one would have said that the door of some hideous vault had been opened into my bedchamber this stench struggled as it were with the volatile perfume that clung about the braid so that my senses were thrust back and forth between disgust and delight in the strangest ways of sensation. I made the strongest effort to put away the effect this wavering had upon me. I forced myself to sit still and think of normal things. Of the men whom I was to see next morning, of the plans I meant to discuss with them.

Useless. The stench was making me ill. A wave of giddiness swept over me and passed. My heart was beating slowly and heavily. Something in my head pulsed in unison. I felt a frightful depression that suddenly burst into an attack of fear, gripping me like hysteria. I wanted to shriek aloud like a woman,

to cover my eyes and run blindly. But at the same time, my muscles failed me. Will and strength were arrested. like frozen water. As I sat there facing the door of the room, I became aware of something at the window behind my back, something that pressed against the open window and stared at me with a hideous covetousness beside which the greed of a beast for its prey is a natural, innocent appetite. I felt that thing's hungry malignance, like a soft, dreadful mouth, sucking toward me, yet held away from me by some force vaguely based on my own resistance,

and I understood how a man may die of horror. Yet presently I turned around. Weak and sick, with dragging effort, I turned in my chair and faced the blackest, uncurtained window where I felt it to be. Nothing was there, to sight or hearing. I sat still and combated that which I knew was there. In the profound stillness, I heard the wind stir the naked branches of the trees, the flowing water through the fragments of the one-time dam, the sputtering of my candle which needed trimming. Sweat ran down my face and body, drenching me with cold.

It crouched against the empty window, staring at me. After a time, the presence seemed not so close. At last I seemed to know it was gone. In the gush of that enormous relief, my remaining strength was swept away like a swimmer in a torrent, and I collapsed, half-fainting in my chair. When I was able, I rose and walked through the house again. Again, the rooms showed nothing to my flashlight,

except dull furniture, walls peeling here and there from long neglect, pictures of no merit and dreary subject. I had expected nothing, and I found nothing. It was on my way upstairs to my bedroom, that a sentence from the invisible lady's story came back to my mind. What crouches behind her unseen? The horror takes its own. The bedroom door opened quietly under my hand.

The rain had ceased, and a freshening breeze came from the west, filling the room with sweet country air. The candle had burned down. While I stood there, the flame. flickered out. After a brief indecision, I made my way to the bed, rolled myself in the blankets, and laid down between the four pineapple-topped posts. This time I kept the flashlight at my hand. But almost at once I slept, and slept heavily far into a bright, windy, March morning. End of Chapter 2. Recording by Roger Maline.

chapter three of the thing from the lake this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter three wide is the seat of the man gentle of speech instruction of kee gemney on the second day after my return to new york my aunt caroline knox called me up on the telephone there are reasons why i always feel myself at a disadvantage with aunt caroline the first of these brings me to a trifling matter that i should have set down before but which i have made a habit of ignoring so far as possible in both thought and speech as was lord byron i am slightly lame i admit that is the only quality in common still i like the romantic association now my limp is very slight and i never have found it interfered much with things i cared to do in fact i am otherwise somewhat above the average in strength and vigor but from my boyhood aunt caroline always made a point of alluding to the physical fact as often as possible she considered that course a healthful discipline my nephew she was accustomed to introduce me lame since he was seven roger do not scowl yes run over trying to save a pet dog a mongrel of no value whatever which would have left some doubt as to whether she referred to poor tatters or to me had it not been for her exceeding pride in our family tree the second reason for my disadvantage before her was her utter contempt for my profession as a composer of popular music

to day her voice came thinly to me across the long-distance wire your cousin philida has failed in her examinations again she announced to me with a species of tragic repose in view of her father's intellect and my or my families her mental status is inexplicable although of course there is your own case why she is the most educated girl i know i protested hastily i presume you mean best educated roger pray do not quite lose your command of language i meant exactly what i had said philida has studied since she was three years old exhaustively and exhaustedly a vision of her plain pale little face rose before me when i spoke it is a burden to be the only child of a professor particularly for a meek girl she has studied insufficiently aunt caroline pursued she is nineteen and her position at vassar is deplorable her health i murmured would not have hampered her had she given proper attention to athletics however i did not call up to hear you defend philida in a matter of which you are necessarily ignorant her father and i are somewhat better judges i should suppose than a young man who is not a student in any true sense of the word and ignores knowledge as a purpose in life not that i wish to wound or depreciate you roger there is i may say a steadiness of moral character beneath your frivolity of mind and pursuit if my poor brother had trained you more wisely if you had been my son

thank you aunt i acknowledge the benevolent intention with an inward quailing at the clank of fetters suggested was there something i can do for you will you meet philida at the grand central and bring her home i cannot have her cross new york alone and take a second train out here her father has a lecture this afternoon and i have a club meeting at the house with pleasure aunt what time does her train get in half after four thank you roger and she looks on you as an elder brother i believe an attitude of cool disapproval on your part might impress upon her how she has disappointed the family leave it to me aunt may i take her to tea between trains and get out to your place on the six o'clock express if you think best you might advise her seriously over the tea a dash of lemon as it were i reflected certainly aunt i could very well i am really obliged the pleasure is mine aunt but that it was going to be philida's i had already decided she would need the support of tea and french pastry before facing her home as for treating her with cool disapproval i would sooner have spent a year at vassar myself it was my intention to meet her with a box of chocolates instead of advice phil was not a loud candy her complexion being under cultivation on the occasions when we were out together it had been my custom to provide a box of sweets upon which she browsed luxuriously bestowing the remnants of

some street child before reaching her home. From the telephone, I turned back to that frivolous pursuit of which my aunt had spoken with such tactfully veiled contempt. She was not softened by the respectable fortune I had made from several successful musical comedies and a number of efforts which my publishers advertise as high-class parlor pieces for the home. In fact, she felt that. it to be a grievance that my lightness should be better paid than the professor's learning,

in which she was no doubt right. Ever since my return from my newly purchased farm in Connecticut, however, I had not been working for money or popular approval, but for my own pleasure. There was a work upon which I spent only special hours of delicious leisure and infinite labor. It held all that was forbidden to popular compositions. depth and sorrow and dissonances dearer than harmony i called it a symphony polynesian and i had spent years in study of barbaric music instruments and kindred things that this love-child of mine might be more richly clothed by a tone or a fancy aunt caroline had interrupted this morning

at a very point of achievement toward which i had been working through the usual alterations of enjoyment and exasperation elevation and dejection that attend most workmen pausing only to set my alarm clock i hurried into recording what i had felt in the tangible form of paper and ink i always set the alarm clock when i have an engagement warned by dire experiences aunt caroline had summoned me about eleven in the morning when the strident voice of the clock again aroused me i had just time to dress and reach the grand central by half-past four i recognized that i was hungry that the vicinity was snowed over with sheets of paper that the piano keys had acquired another ink stain and my pipe had charred another black spot on the desktop well it had been a good day and fillet as tea would have to be my belated luncheon or early dinner even so it was necessary to make haste it was in that haste of making ready that i uncovered the braid of glittering hair which i had brought from connecticut i use no exaggeration when i say it glittered it did each hair was lustrous with a peculiar shining vitality and crinkled slightly along its full length with a renewed self-reproach at sight of its humbled exile and captivity i took up the trophy of my one-adventive venture. While I am without much experience, such a quantity seemed unusual. Also, I had not known

such a mass of hair could be so soft and supple in the hand. My mother and little sister died before I can remember, and while I have many good friends, I have none intimate enough to educate me in such matters. Perhaps a consciousness of that trifling physical disadvantage of mine, has made me prefer a good deal of solitude in my hours at home the faint tenacious yet volatile perfume drifted to my nostrils as i held the braid who could the woman be who brought that costly fragrance into a deserted farmhouse for so exquisite and unique a fragrance could only be the work of a master perfumer there was youth in that vigorous hair coquetry in the individual perfume panic in her useless sacrifice of the braid i held yet strangest self-possession in the telling of that fanciful tale of sorcery to me on that tale told dramatically in the dark i had next morning blamed the weird waking nightmare that i had suffered after her visit the horror of the night could not endure the strong sun and wind of the march morning that followed like scrooge i analyzed my ghost as a bit of undigested beef or a blot of mustard

certainly the thing had been actual enough while it lasted but my reason had thrust it away that was over i reflected as i laid the braid back in the drawer but surely the lady was not vanished like the nightmare. Surely I should find her in some neighbor's daughter when my house was finished and I went there for the summer? She could not hide from me with that bright web about her head whose twin web I held. It had grown so late that I had to take a taxi cab to the terminal, just halting at a shop long enough to buy a box of the chocolates my cousin preferred. But when I reached the great station and found my way through the swirl of travelers to the track where Phil's train should come in, I was told the express had been delayed. Probably half an hour late, the gateman informed me. Maybe more. Of course, though, she may pull in at any time.

Which meant no tea for Philida. instead a rush across town to the Pennsylvania station to catch the train for her home. As I could not leave my post lest she arrive in my absence, it also meant nothing to eat for me until we reached Aunt Carolyn's hospitality, which was cool and restrained rather than festive. I foresaw the heavy atmosphere that would brood over all like a cold fog, this evening of Phil's disgraceful return from the scholastic arena. Assertaining from the gate-men that the airing train was certain not to pull in during the next ten minutes,

I sought a telephone booth. Aunt Carolyn, Phil's train is going to be very late, possibly an hour late, I misinformed, my kinswoman, when her voice answered me. I have had nothing to eat since breakfast, and she will be home. hungry, long before we reach your house. May I not take her to dinner here in town? Please do not call your cousin, Phil, she rebuked me, and paused to deliberate. You had no luncheon, you say? None. Why not? Were you ill? No, just busy. I forgot lunch. I am beginning to feel it now. Still, if you wish us to come

straight home, do not consider me. I knew of old how submission mollified, Aunt Carolyn. She relented now. Well, you are very good, Roger, to save your uncle a trip into the city to meet her. I must not impose upon you, but a quiet hotel. Certainly, Aunt. Philida does not deserve pampering enjoyment. I am convinced. consenting for your sake. Thank you, aunt.

I wonder, then, if you would mind if we stopped to see a show that I especially want to look over, for business reasons. We would come out on the Theatre Express, as we have done before. You remember. Yes, but... Thank you. I'll take good care of her. Goodbye.

The receiver was still talking when I hung up. There is no other form of concern. conversation so incomparably convenient. The train arrived within the half hour. With the in-rush of travelers, I cited Philida's sober young figure moving along the cement platform. She walked with dejection. Her gray suit represented a compromise between fashion and her mother's opinion of decorum, thus attaining a length and fullness, not enough for grace yet too much for jaunty. her solemn gray hat was set too squarely upon the pale brown hair brushed back from her forehead her nice young girl's eyes looked out through a pair of shell-rimmed spectacles she was too thin and too pale to content me when she saw me coming toward her her face brightened and colored quite warmly she waved her bag with actual a bandit

and her lagging step quickened to a run cousin roger she exclaimed breathlessly oh how good of you to come she gripped my hands in a candid fervor of relief and pleasure i am so glad it is you she insisted i was sorry the train could not be later i wished almost it would never get in and all the time it was you who were waiting for me it was and now you are about to share an orgy i told her i have your mother's permission to take you to dinner miss knox here in town just us yes and afterward we will take in any show you fancy how does that strike you she gazed up at me absorbing the idea and my seriousness to my dismay she grew pain again. I really believe it'll keep me from just dying. I pretended to think that a joke. But I recognized that my little cousin was on the sloping way toward a nervous breakdown. No baggage, I observed. Good. I hope you to not eat too much luncheon. This will be an early dinner. She waited to take off the spectacles and put them in her little bag.

I do not need them except to study, but I didn't dare meet Mother without them, she explained. No, I could not eat lunch or breakfast either, Cousin Roger, nor much dinner last night. Oh, if you knew how I dread the grind, I should rather run away. So we will, for this evening. Yes, where, where were you going to take me? we had crossed the great white hall to street level and a taxicab was rolling up to halt before us surprised by the anxiety in the eyes she lifted to mine i named the staidly fastidious hotel where i usually took her when we were permitted an excursion together unless you have a choice i finished i have she breathed resolution i want to go to a restaurant with a cabaret instead of going to the theatre may i please may i will you take me where i say this one time

her earnestness amazed me i knew what her mother would say i also knew or thought i knew that philada needed the mental relaxation which comes from having one's own way in her mood no one else's way however wise or agreeable will do it all all right i yielded if you will promise me faith of a gentlewoman to tell aunt caroline that that i took you there and you did not know where you were going my shoulders are broader than yours and have borne the buffeting of thirty-two years instead of nineteen had you chosen the place or shall i to my second surprise she answered with the name of an uptown place where i never had been and where i would have decidedly preferred not to take her they have a skating ballet she urged as i had had been hesitated. I know it is wonderful. Please, please! I gave the direction to the chauffeur, and followed my cousin into the cab. It seemed a proper moment to present the chocolates from my overcoat pocket. When she proved too languid to unwrap the box, I was seriously uneasy. You cannot possibly know how dreadful it is to be the only child of two intellectual people who

expect one to be a credit, she excused her lack of appetite, nervously twitching the guilt cord about the package. And to be stupid and a disappointment. Yes, as long as I can remember, I have been a disappointment. If only there had been another to divide all those expectations, if only you had been my brother. Heaven forbid, I exclaimed hastily. That is, don't bother about explaining she smiled wanly i understand but you are distinguished and you look it i never will be and i am ugly mother expects me to be an astronomer like father and work with him or to go in for club life and serious writing as she does i never can do either neither could i phil you are clever successful everybody knows your name. When we are out and people or an orchestra play your music,

Mother always says, A trifle of my nephews, Roger Locke. Very original, is it not? Of course I do not understand music, but I hear that his last light opera, and then she leans back and just eats up all the nice things said about your work. She would never let you know,

it, but she does. And that is the sort of thing she wants from me. I want to make cookies, and I love fancy work. The taxi cab drew up with a jerk before the gaudy entrance to Silver Isles. I imagine Philida had the vaguest ideas of what such places were like. When we were settled at a table in a general blaze of pink lights, beside a fountain that ran, colored water, I regarded her humorously. But she seemed quite contented with her surroundings, looking about her with an air I can best describe as grave excitement. At this hour the room was not half filled, and the jazz orchestra had withdrawn to prepare for a hard night's work. After I had ordered our dinner, I glanced up to see her fingers busied, loosening the severe

lines of her brushed back hair. Everyone here looks so nice, she said wistfully. I wish my hair did shine and cuddle around my face like those women's does. Do I look queer, cousin? You're looking at me so... I was thinking what pretty eyes you have. Her pale face flushed. Really?

Most truthfully. as for the hair isn't that a matter of bottled polish and hairdressers but you remind me of a question for you isn't a braid of hair this wide i laid off the dimensions on the table this long and thick a good deal for a woman to own show me again i obeyed while she leaned forward to observe not one girl in a hundred had so much she pronounced judgment who is she probably it isn't all her own anyhow it is not now but it was i said remorsefully how could you tell did you measure it with sarcasm do you remember the maxim we used to write in copy-books measure a thousand times and cut once one has to be cautious i cut it first and then measured what tell me at last she was interested and amused there was no reason why i should not tell her of my midnight adventure we never repeated one another's little confidences she listened with many comments and exclamations to the story of the unseen lady the legend of the fair witch the dagger that was a paper knife by day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the singular nightmare or hallucination

that had been my second visitor. My reason had accounted for the experience and dismissed it. Some other part of myself avoided the memory, with that deep, unreasoning sense of horror sometimes left by a morbid dream. The dinner crowd had flowed in while we ate and talked, a burst of applause aroused me to this fact and the commencement of the first show of the evening the orchestra had taken their places they will hardly begin with their best act i remarked surprised by philida's convulsive start and rapt intentness upon the stretch of ice that formed the exhibition floor your ballet on skates probably will come later i did not come to see the ballet she answered her voice low no what then a man i know once when i was a little fellow i raced headlong into the low-swinging branch of a tree the bough striking me across the forehead so that i was bowed over backward amid a shower of apples i felt a twin sensation now Here, Philida?

Yes. Someone from your hometown or your college town, I essayed a casual tone. Neither. He belongs here, and they call him Flying Veer. He... Look, look, cousin! I turned and saw that the first performer was upon the ice floor. He came down the center like a silver-shod mercury.

In the silence, for the orchestra did not accompany his entrance, the faint musical ringing of his skates ran softly with him. My first unwilling recognition of his good looks and athletic grace was followed by an equally reluctant admission of his skill. Reluctant because my anger and bewilderment were hot against the man. my little cousin my pathetic unworldly philida and this cabaret entertainer at the mere joining of their names my senses revolted what could they have in common how had she seen him having seen him it was easy to understand how he had fascinated her inexperience only what was his object he had seen us where we sat i saw his dark eyes fix upon her and flash some message her plain little face irradiated her fingers unconsciously twisting and wringing her napkin she leaned forward to watch and answer glance for glance i would rather not put into words my thoughts yet i watched his performance in spite of myself he held me with his swift certain skill his vitality and youth he was gone with the swooping suddenness of his appearance the jazz music clattered out philida turned back to me and began to speak with the hushed rapture that baffled and infuriated me you understand cousin roger now that you have seen em you do understand

no let me talk please let me tell you if i can it began last summer at the school where i was cramming for college work oh how tired i was of study how tired of it i am and always shall be i think that side of me never will get rested then in the woods i met him he was stopping at a hotel not far away i we i waited for her to go on instead she abruptly spread wide her hands in a gesture of helplessness after all i cannot tell you not even you cousin he he liked me he treated me just as a really truly girl who would have partners at dances and wear fluffy frocks and curl her hair he thought i was pretty the naive wonder and triumph of her cry the challenge in her brown eyes to my belief were moving things i registered some ugly mental comments on the rearing of phil and the kind of humility that is not good for the soul why not i demanded of course she shook her head no thank you but no not pretty except to him only to him because he loves me i do not know what impatience i exclaimed she checked me leaning across the table to grasp my hands in both hers hush oh hush dear cousin roger for it is quite too late we were married six months ago

last autumn when i could i asked married legally beyond mistake were you not under eighteen years old i was eighteen years and a half there is no mistake at all we walked over to the city hall in the nearest town and took out our license and were married very well i will take you home to you home to your own to your own to your own to your own your father and mother now then see this man myself if there is indeed no flaw in the marriage and it cannot be annulled a divorce must be arranged any money i have or expect to have would be a small price to set you free from the miserable business but the first thing is to get you home we will start now she detained my hand when i would have signaled our waiter her eyes shining and solemn as a small child's met mine no cousin please i am not going home any more at least not alone i asked you to bring me here where he is because i am going to stay with my husband never i stated firmly yes not if i have to send for your father and take you home by force you cannot i am of age philida i am responsible for you to your parents to-night let me take you home explain things to them and then decide your course but that is what i most do not want to do she naively exclaimed you will not i'm sorry no then i must see the man not hurt

i recalled the man we had just seen on the skating floor with a qualm of quite unreasonable bitterness that anxiety of philidas had a flavor of irony for me hardly i returned there are fortunately other means of persuasion than physical force. Oh, but you cannot persuade him to give me up. I was silent, at which, being a woman, she grew troubled. How could you? she urged. You have had no opportunity of judging what influence money has on some people, Phil. She laughed out in relief. Is that all?

Try, cousin. You trust him so much. much? In everything, forever. Then, if I succeed in buying him off, promise me that you will come home with me? If he takes money to leave me? Yes. I should die, but I will promise if you want me to, because I know it never will happen, just as I might promise to do anything when I knew that I never would have to it out. Very well, I accepted the best I could get. I will go find him. There is no need. He is coming here to our table as soon as he is free. I will not have you seen with him in this place. But I am going to stay here with him, she said. Her eyes, the meek eyes of Philida, defied me.

My faint authority was a sham. What could be done, I recognized, must be done through the man. We sat in silence after that. Presently her gaze fixed a slant on me as if to dare my interference. She drew up a thin gold chain that hung about her neck and ended beneath her blouse. From it she unfastened a wedding ring and gravely, put the thing on her third finger, the schoolgirl romanticism of the gesture, blended with an air of little girl naughtiness.

She looked more fit for a nursery than for this business. I could tell from the change in her expression when the man was approaching. I rose, meaning to meet him and turn him aside from our table. But Philida halted me with one deftly planted question. you would not leave me alone in this place cousin certainly i would not leave her alone at a table here not even alone in appearance while i had my interview with the man close at hand yet it seemed impossible to speak before her she calmly answered my perplexity you must talk to him here of course i want to listen to you both indeed i shall not interfere at all or be angry or hurt i know how good you mean to be dear only you do not understand i sat down again perforce when the man's shadow presently fell across our table it did not soothe me to see phil thrust her hand in his her small face enraptured her fingers locking about his with a caress plainly

as a kiss. She said proudly, if tremulously, "'Cously, "'Cousin, Roger, this is my husband. Mr. Locke, Ethan, dear.' He said nothing. His hesitating movement to offer his hand, I chose to ignore. I admit that my spirit rose against him to the point of loathing as he stood there, tall, correct in attire, the focus of admiring glances from other diners, in every way the antithesis of my poor philida. Sit down, I bade curtly when he did not speak. Miss Knox insists that we have our interview here. I should have preferred otherwise, but her presence must not prevent what has to be said.

it won't prevent anything I want to say, Mr. Locke, he answered. He spoke with a drawl, not the drawl of affectation, nor the drawl of South or West so cherished by the romantic, but the slow, deliberate speech of New England's upper coasts. It had the oddest effect, that honest, homely accent on the lips of a performer in this place? Phil drew him down to the third chair at the table, after which she folded her hands in the edge of the cloth, as if to signify to me how she kept her promise of neutrality and looked fixedly at her glass of water instead of at either of us.

Plainly, all action was supposed to proceed from me. My cousin has just told me of her marriage, I opened, as dryly concise as I could man. explanation it is of course impossible that she should adopt your way of living as she seems to have in mind you may not understand yet that it also is impossible for you to adopt hers no doubt you have supposed her to be the daughter of wealthy people or at least people of whom money could be obtained you were wrong professor knox has nothing but his mind her parents are of the scholarly not of the moneyed class she has no kin who could or would support her husband or pay largely to be rid of him of all her people i happen to be the best off financially it happens also that i am not sentimental nor alarmed at the idea of newspaper exploitation for either of us it is necessary that all this be plainly set forth before we go further now for your side you have involved miss knox to the extent of marriage to free her from this trap into which her inexperience has walked is worth a reasonable price i will pay it i shall take her home to her father and mother to-night and consult my lawyer to-morrow

he will conduct negotiations with you the day miss knox is divorced from you without useless scandal or trouble-making i will pay to you the sum agreed upon with my lawyer if you prefer to make yourself objectionable you will get nothing now or later he took it all without a flicker of the eyelids not interrupting or displaying any affectation of being insulted i acknowledge now that it was an outrageous speech to make to a man of whom i knew nothing but it was so intended summing up what i considered an outrageous situation brought about by his playing upon a young girl's ignorance of such fellows as himself philetta's usually pale cheeks were burning several times she would have broken in upon me with protests if veer had not silenced her by the merest glances of warning a proof of his influence over her which had not inclined me toward gentleness with him when i finished there was a pause before he turned his dark eyes to mine and held them there honest enough he drawled with that incongruous coast of main tang to his leisureness i'll match you there mr locke i don't care whether you make fifty thousand a year with your music writing or whether you grind a street piano with a tin cup on top it's nothing to me i guess we can do without your lawyer too because you see i married mrs veer because i wanted her and i figure on supporting her if her folks are too cultivated to stand me i'm sorry but they won't have to see me so that's settled he was honest his glance drove that fact home to me with a fist-like impact there was nothing i was nothing i was to see me-and-a-fist like impact there was nothing i was

was so poorly prepared to meet phil at his hands went out to him in an impulsive movement he covered them both with one of his for a moment before gently putting them in her lap with a gesture of reminder toward the revelers all about us the delicacy of that thought for her was another disclosure of character unconsciously made worthy or unworthy he did love phil i am not too dully obstinate to recognize a mistake of my own whatever my bitterness against the man i had to accord him some respect i sat for a while striving to align my forces to attack this new front i don't blame you for thinking what you said mr locke his voice presently spoke across my perplexity i can see the way things came to you finding me here and all i'm glad to have had this chance to talk it out with one of my wife's relations i'd like them to know she'll be taken care of outside of that i guess there is nothing we have to say to each other i suppose i owe you both an apology i said stiffly oh that's all right for both of us i can see how much store you set by her but what are you going to do with her man i burst forth do you expect to keep her here sitting at a table in this place and watching you do your turn making your fellow performers her friends seeing and learning I checked my outpouring of disgust.

Or do you propose to shut her up in some third-class boarding-house, day and night, while you hang around here? Good heavens, Veer! Do you realize what either life would be for a nineteen-year-old girl brought up as she has been? He colored. As for bringing up, he retorted, I guess she couldn't be a lot more miserable

than her folks worried her into being. But you're right about the rest. That's why I was going to leave her with her folks yet a while, until I had a place for her. I mean, while I saved up enough to get the place. But I wrote to him when I failed in my exams, Cousin Roger, Philida broke in. I told him that I would not go home.

I could not bear it. I was coming to him, and he would just have to keep him. me with him, or I should die. Indeed, I do not care about places. I think it will be lovely fun to sit here and watch him, or go behind the scenes with him and make friends with the other people. I am surprised that you are so narrow, cousin Roger,

when all your own best friends are theatrical people and artists, and you think so highly of them. I answered nothing to that. that the distance between the stage and this class of cabaret show was not to be traversed in a few seven-league words i looked at veer who returned my look squarely and soberly you needn't worry about her being here mr locke he said i know better than that but she has to come to me it's her right don't you think i'll promise you to take her to a better place as soon as i can manage what kind of place i'm saving to get a place in the country he answered diffidently i'm a countryman and philida thinks she'd like it you i exclaimed unable to smother my derision and unbelief my glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming the gloss on his curling dark hair and the dubious diamond on his little finger he reddened through his clear dark skin but his eyes were not those of a man taken in a lie did you take notice of what i do here he asked me with the first touch of humility i had seen in him

i couldn't dance or sing or do parlor tricks i wasn't bred to parlors or indoors but i learned to skate pretty fancy from a boy up my folks farm was on a farm was on the side of a lake and the schoolhouse on the other. About November that lake used to freeze solid. My brother and I used to skate five miles to school and back again, before we were six years old. We lived on skates about half the year, I guess. Well, you don't care about the rest, how the farm was just about big enough to support my elder brother and his family, and I came to New York. nor how I found New York pretty well filled up with folks who knew considerably more than I did. It was the manager of this place who advertised for expert skaters, who dressed me up like this, and paid me the first living wages I'd had in the city.

All the same, I was bred a farmer, and I mean to get back to it. Always have. You're a man, Mr. Locke, and I'd hate you to think I'd hate you to think I'd, was a shimmy dancer on ice and nothing else, or I wouldn't mention it. My father would have taken the buggy whip to me, I guess, if he had lived to see me in this rig. Soon as I've got enough put by, I'll shed this perfume suit and the cheap jewelry, and take my wife where she can have a chance to forget I ever wore them. But I like them, put in Philida ardently. Please do not fuss so, Ethan, because I really do.

Do you? I turned upon her. Are you sure, then, that it is not all this cabaret glamour you really are in love with? Would you care for him as an ordinary, hard-working fellow, in a pair of overalls and a flannel shirt? No applause, no lights, no stage? She laughed up at me. you have forgotten that i met ethan while he was on a vacation from his work here and roughing it when i married him i had hardly seen him in anything except his navy flannel shirt scrubby trousers and funny blunt-toed shoes you served in the war i asked him he nodded yes on a submarine chaser got pneumonia from exposure and was invalidated home just before the armistice and you came back here i came here he corrected me i enlisted from maine i was discharged in new york that was when i couldn't find anything i could do until

this skating trick came along. I sat thinking for a time, as long thoughts as I could command. The obvious course was to send for Philida's father. Yet what could that vague and learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned the professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant, swinging his eyeglasses by their silk ribbon, and peering at veer in helpless distaste,

and consternation. It was practically certain that Phil would refuse to go home with him. What if she did go home? I could picture the scene there when the truth came out. The mortification of her people, the gossip in the little town,

her outcast position among the girls and boys with whom she had grown up. What a martyrdom for a sensitive spirit. Of course, the only possible thing can considered by aunt caroline would be a prompt divorce if philida refused to consent to a divorce how could she live at home as the wife of a man her parents had pronounced unfit to receive if she yielded and gave up veer would she be much better off an embarrassment to her family the heroine of a stolen marriage and reno freedom what chances of happiness would she have in her conventional circle. Especially as she neither was a beauty nor the dashing type of girl who might make capital of such a

reputation. Probably she would bury herself in nun-like seclusion, stay in her room when collars came, and wear a veil when she went out to walk. Meanwhile, she would break her heart for veer. Could matters be any worse if she tried life-were? with him, even if the experiment eventually proved a failure and ended in a divorce instead of beginning there? Might not her parents be spared much they most dreaded, if their friends could be told simply

that Philida had made a love match and was with her husband? Finally, Philida was a human creature with the right to manage her own life. Had any of us the right to lay hands upon her existence? and mold it to our fancy? I looked up from my reverie to find the eyes of both of them fixed on me as if I held their doom balanced upon my palm.

Perhaps, in a sense, I did. Phil, will you come home to your father and mother and consider all this a bit more before you decide, I asked her? I thought I knew the answer to this, and I did. no cousin roger she refused firmly please forgive me i know how kind you mean to be but-no i shall stay with ethan if ever you love any one you will understand i accepted the decision there was no reason why i should think of the woman who had spoken to me across the darkness in a voice of melody and power or why i should seem to feel again the exquisite live softness of her braid within my hand

but it was so very well i said veer it is to you then as philida's husband that i must address any plans i do not pretend to like the course she has taken i do not know what action her parents may take although i believe they will listen to my advice putting all that aside she refuses to come with me and you agree that she cannot stay here i have just bought a farm in connecticut intending to use it as a summer home there are some alterations and repairs being made but little is to be changed inside the house and it is in perfectly livable shape here is my offer take philida there and i will make you manager of the place i will pay all reasonable expenses of putting the land into proper condition and getting such stock and equipment as you judge best all expenses and upkeep of the house and whatever salary usually is drawn by such managers of small estates. I shall be there, on and off, but you and Philida must take charge of everything. I am neither a farmer nor a housekeeper, and do not wish to be either. I bought the place only because New York is too hot to work in during three months of the year, and I hate summer resorts.

Keep my room ready, and you will find I disturb you little. Of course, hire. what servants are necessary. Now, if you make the place self-supporting inside of five years, I will deed the whole thing to you too. To put it better, if you succeed in making the farm pay a living for yourselves, I will make it over to you and withdraw. If you fail, well, I suppose you will be no worse off than you are now. They were stricken speechless.

perhaps my attitude had not pointed to such a conclusion of our interview philida told me long afterward that she expected me to bid them good evening and abandon them forever as my mildest course with alternative possibilities such as summoning a policeman and having veer hailed to prison seeing their condition i rose i will stroll about and leave you a chance to talk it over i declare although there are few ordeals I dislike more than displaying my limp about such public rooms. Veer stopped me, rising as I rose. No need of that for us, he answered, facing me across the little table. About giving us your farm, Mr. Locke, that's for the future. Just now, the manager's job is plenty big enough to thank you for. I wish I could say it better.

If you'll stay here with Philida for ten minutes until I can get back, I'll be obliged. Where are you going? To resign here and get my outfit into a suitcase. He had taken up my challenge like a man, at least. There were none of the hesitations and excuses to stay in town that I had half expected. It pleased me that he decided. for Phil as well as himself. Some of my ideas about marriage are antiquated, I admit. I nodded to him and sat down again. It is unnecessary to record the childish things

Philida tried to say to me while he was gone. I am so happy, was her apology for threatened tears. I never knew anyone except Ethan could be so kind. And... And will you tell father and mother? Yes. I winced, though, at that prospect. Give me that little bag you carry on your wrist. She obeyed, wide-eyed. You do tow to powder, puff.

I did not know whether Aunt Carolyn permitted it. Rub it on your nose, I advised, passing the bit of fluff to her. While she complied, almost like a netherland. normally frivolous girl, I used the moment to transfer a few bank-notes to the bag, so some need might not find her penniless. Veer came back in not much more than the promised ten minutes. He had changed to grey street clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the diamond had disappeared from his finger,

and his curly head looked as if it had been held under a water-fosset and vigorously toweled to lessen the, brillianteen gloss if you'll tell us where your farm is mr locke we'll start he volunteered philida looked up at him with eyes of adoring trust i had the porter at the terminal check my suit-case to be called for we shall have to get it dear in spite of myself i smiled at their amazing promptitude there was both reassurance and pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness pressing forward, where? They did not know, nor I. Certainly we did not dream

how strange a goal awaited one of us three, or on what weird, desolate path that traveler's foot was already set. You had better go to a good hotel for tonight, I modified their plan. Tomorrow is time enough to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has had enough excitement for one day.

I will write full directions for the trip, Veer, on the back of this timetable of the railroad you must take. They were enchanted with this suggestion. Indeed, they were in a state of mind to have assented if I advised them to sit out on a park bench until morning. Yet, when I had put them and their scanty luggage into a taxi-cab, I suffered a bad pang of misgiving. What responsibility was I assuming in letting my little girl cousin go like this?

What did I know of this man, or where he would take her? I think Philida defined something of my trouble, for she leaned out the door to me and held up her face like a child to be kissed. I am so happy, she whispered. I turned to veer. who had a long envelope in readiness to put in my hand i guess you might like to have these for a while mr locke he said with one of his slow straightforward glances with which farewells i had to be content and watch their taxi swing out into the bright dark flow of traffic where it was lost from my sight after which i entered another taxi-cap by my unromantic self and was driven to that railroad station where i would find a train bound to the college town that was the home of aunt caroline and her husband

one always thought of phil's parents in that order although the professor was a moderately distinguished scientist and his spouse merely masterful in her own limited circle the envelope veer had given me contained their marriage certificate his release from the navy and his membership card in the american legion End of Chapter 3. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 4 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram.

Chapter 4. Fair speech is more rare than the emerales found by slave maidens on the pebbles. Petahotep at ten o'clock next morning i was summoned from my sleep by the bell of the telephone beside my bed it was not a pleasant sleep although i had not returned to my apartment until dawn nightmare doubts galloped ruthless hoods over any repose philetta's voice came over the wire to me like the morning song of a bird good morning cousin roger we are going to take the train in a few moments but i could not leave new york without telling you how happy i am are you-did i wake you up i was afraid that i might but eathan said you would like me to call even so my dear it was the kindest thought you ever had i told her fervently was it she hesitated then were they pretty dreadful to you at home quite do you suppose they will do anything dreadful about us no nothing it did not seem necessary to tell her that aunt caroline did not know where the runaways had gone and was thereby debarred from hasty action

Phil and his father had privately agreed with me in this. I am so very happy, cousin Roger. I am glad, Phil. And you will come to the farm soon? Soon, I promised. So the nightmares of immediate anxiety for her galloped themselves away, routed for that time. Like my goldfish, when their bowl has been unduly shaken,

I sank down again into the quieted waters of my little world and absorption in my own affairs. There have been hours when I wondered if I was of more importance than they, as a matter of cosmic fact. A month passed before I kept my promise to go to the farm in Connecticut. As a first reason, I wanted to leave my young couple alone for a period of adjustment. Also, I was curious to see how they were. would handle the business left to them. I held telephone conversations with Philida and with various contractors now and then. I sent out the furnishings for my own room. Everything else I purposely left to the experimenters. There was a second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while

the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and I relished the savor of this one upon my palate. I was not quite ready to find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of some neighbor, who had sought shelter from the storm in that supposedly empty house, and probably mistaken me for a tramp. Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and prove that the adolphed. adventure was ended, that she had been a bird of passage who had gone on with no thought of return. With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in town, April was

verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my luggage put into the car and started on my 50-mile drive to the house by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend it to be over-long. to be a constraint upon the household i had established or assume a right there was far from the course i planned it was not certain veer and i would be comfortable housemates but to stay away together would have hurt philida as much as to stay too long i considered probably a week would be about enough for this time so lightly so ignorantly i stepped from the first great division of my life life into the second, not hearing the closing of the gate through which there was no turning back. End of Chapter 4. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 5 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram. Chapter 5 The very room, because she was. was in seemed warm from floor to ceiling. The curtain. I arrived at noon when a bright sun set the country air afloat with notes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with yellow sparkles. The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely walls,

deep arched porches that took the place of the old shallow affairs scarlet spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been all united in giving it the gayest most modern air imaginable A gravel drive curved in beneath the new port-cochere, inviting the wheels of my car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower beds laid out. The new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its arms to me and laughed an invitation. As I stepped from my car, I heard, running feet and a girl sped around the veranda to meet me.

She cast herself into my arms before I fairly realized this was philida. A philida as new to my eyes as the house. After the first greetings, I held her off to analyze the change. She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little mouth turned up instead of down, and developed i looked twice yes developed a dimple the dull hair i always had seen brushed plainly back now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness she was attired in a china-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash nodded in front quite daringly for philida why phil how pretty we are i admired she looked up at me like a praised little girl and smoothed the sash i noticed she wore above her wedding-ring that diamond which once had adorned veer's finger so distastefully to me

it shone bravely in the sunlight with quite a display of fire tracing my gaze she held out her hand for me to see yes it was his cousin roger of course we have not very much money yet and i do not care about all the engagement rings that ever were thought of but i was afraid people up here might notice that i had none and think slightingly of ethan so i asked him and we went to a jeweller who made it smaller to fit me it is not a false stone you know it is a white topaz and i love it better than the best one biggest diamond. Then you are still happy? Forever and ever, world without end, she answered solemnly. We went in. Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic in the long-closed house. Quaint furniture, no longer dust grimed but lustrous with cleanliness and polish,

had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery in cheerful tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs, order and daintiness everywhere changed the interior out of my recognition. Already the atmosphere of home and cheer was established. Come see your rooms, Philida invited and raptured by my admiration. They are so pretty! She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and ushered me into the room of graceful adventurers,

and a grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the threshold. I had ordered the partition removed between the two chambers on this side, giving me one large room. This, with the little bathroom attached, occupied the entire large frontage of the house. This long, spacious room, floors covered by my Chinese rugs, walls echoing the rugs smoke blue, my piano in a bright corner, my special easy chairs and writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with such familiar comfort that I could not identify the neglected chamber where I had slept one night in the old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The windows were opened, and white curtains with their overdraparies of blue silk

were swinging in and out on a fresh breeze where the horror of my dream had seen. seemed to press itself against the black panes. Decidedly, I must have had a bad attack of indigestion that night. See how nice, Philida was urging appreciation at my side. We swung those lovely old hangings from the arch, so they can be drawn across the bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I do not know why you should like, everything is so pretty. your long Venetian mirror came safely and all your darling lamps.

And I hope you like it so well, cousin Roger, that you will stay here always. When she left me alone, I walked to the different windows, contemplating the stretches of lawn dotted with budding apple trees, and the lake that lay beyond, shining in the sun. Was Phyllis' charming wish to become a fact, I wondered? could this rest and calm hold me content here where i had meant merely to pause and pass on i looked at the yellow country road meandering past the lake into unseen distance should i ever see my lady of the beautiful tresses come that way or travel that road to where she lived if i did meet her would she forgive me the loss of her braid there would be a test for the sweetness of her disposition.

When a chiming dinner-gong summoned me downstairs, I found Veer awaiting me beside Philida. We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant speech about their having expected me sooner. If pale, timid Phil had become a surprising butterfly, Veer had taken the reverse progress toward the sober grub. I like him better in outing-law.

clothes, although he showed even more the unusual good looks which so unreasonably prejudiced me against him. If he felt any strain in our meeting, his slow, tranquil trick of speech and manner covered it. I hope I did as well. It was then I discovered that his wife's pet name for him fitted like a glove. She called him drawls. The luncheon was good. cooked and served by a middle-aged Swedish woman named Christina. Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by the lady of the house to view the new fittings and improvements. Most odd and pretty it was to see Philida in that role of housewife,

and to watch her pride in veer and deference to him. Let me record that I never saw the daughter of Aunt Carolyn fail in this settled course toward her husband. Whether it was born of revulsion from her mother's hectoring domestic method, or of consciousness that outsiders might rate veer below his wife in station and education, so her respect for him must forbid their slight, I do not know. But I never saw her oppose him or speak rudely to him before other people. I suppose they may have had the usual conjugal dival,

differings, neither of them being angelic. If so, no outsider ever glimpsed the fact. We spoke of nothing serious on that first day. They both showed me the various improvements finished or progressing, indoors or out. We dined as agreeably as we had lunched. Quite early afterward, I excused myself, and left together the two who were still in their honeymoon. At the door of my room, I pushed a wall switch that lighted simultaneously three lamps. In this I had repeated the arrangement used by me for years in my city apartment. I have a demand for light somewhere in my makeup, and no reason for not indulging it. There flashed out of the dusk a large lamp upon my writing table,

a tall floor lamp beside the piano, and a reading lamp on a stand, beside my bed at the far end of the room. All three were shaded in a smoke-blue and rose-color effect that long since had caught my fancy for night work. The shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones, rough-cut things of sapphire, turmaline pink, and baroque pearl. I lay emphasis upon this to make clear how normal, serene,

and even familiar, in effect, was the room into which I came. Yet, as I closed the door behind me, and stood in that softly brilliant radiance, a shudder shook me from head to foot with the violence of an electric shock. A sense of suffocation caught at my throat like an unseen hand. Both sensations were gone in the time of a drawn breath, leaving only astonishment in their wake.

presently i went on with the purpose that had brought me upstairs lifting a portfolio to the table and beginning to unpack the work which i had been doing in new york as i laid out the first sheets of music there drifted to my ears that vague sound from the lake i had heard in my first night visit here while i stood on the tumble-down porch the sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips or something like the sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips or something some creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid slime. As before, I wondered what movement of the shallow waters could produce that result. Not the tide now, for the new dam was up and the lake cut off from Long Island Sound. The pouring of the waterfall flowed on as a reminder of that fact. The sound was not repeated. The dusk outside the wind.

offered nothing unusual to be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down at my writing table. I am not accustomed to heed time. There never has been anyone to care what hours I kept, and I work best at night. Midnight was long past when I thought of rest. I declare that I thought of nothing more, not even recalling the vague unease felt on entering the room.

A day spent in the fresh air, followed by an evening of hard work and journeyings between the piano and table, had left me utterly weary. When I lay down, it was to sleep at once. End of Chapter 5. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 6 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter six i have made a story that hath not been heard a great feat of arms that hath not been seen amenem ha

i woke slowly it seemed that i struggled to wakefulness as a spent swimmer struggles toward shore up up through deep poles of sleep i dragged myself driven by some dimly sensed necessity peril had stolen upon me in my unconsciousness a stalking beast i knew that with nightmare certainty it was as if my soul stood affrighted beside my brain wailing upon its ally to arouse and stand with it against the menace and my brain answered but with infinite difficulty like a drugged warrior who hears the clang of battle and horses numbed limbs to stir arise and grasp the sword i was awake suddenly the swimmer reaching the surface how shall i describe fear incarnate the horror was at the open window opposite the foot of my bed staring in upon me with slavering covetousness of the prey it watched i lay there and felt it seek for me across the darkness with tentacles of evil that groped for some part of me upon which it might lay hold the room was still between the draperies the windows showed nothing to the eye except a dark square faintly tinged with the night luminance of the sky there was nothing to see nothing to hear but gradually i became aware of a hideous odor of mold and mildew of must and damp decay that loaded the air with disgust

i lay there and opposed the approach of the thing with all the will of resistance in me the sweat poured from my whole body so that i lay as in water and the drenched linen of my sleeping suit clung coldly to me it could not pass the defence of my will i felt the malevolent fury of its striving like the antenna of some monstrous insect brushing about my body i felt its evil desires wavering about my mental self examining searching where it might seize it had not yet found the weakness it sought if it did the sickening vault-like air i must breathe fought for it so did the darkness all this time or the time that seemed so long i had no more command of my body than a cataleptic patient every ounce of force in me had rushed to support the two warriors of the battle the brain and will that opposed the clutching menace but now as i grew more and more fully awake out of very loathing and danger i drew determination slowly painfully i began to free my right arm and hand from this paralysis as i advanced in resolution the thing seemed to recoil inch by inch i moved my hand across the bed toward my reading lamp on the stand beside me in proportion as i moved the dreadful tentacles drew back and away a last effort and the chain was in my fingers i jerked spasmodically

rosy light from the lamp flashed over the room all the quiet comfort of the place sprang into view as if to reassure me the piano opened as i had left it the table strewn with my evening's work each bit of furniture each drapery or trinket undisturbed the thing was gone in the hush i heard my panting breath and the tick of my watch on the stand it was two o'clock in the morning as i mechanically read the hour a cock somewhere shrilled at second call before dawn the horror had been true to the legendary time of apparitions weak and chilled i presently made an attempt to rise but at the movement a wave of sickness swept through me the room seemed to rock and swing i had just time to recognize the grip of faintness before i fell back on the pillow vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils which expanded avidly for this new air perfume that was a tonic a subtle elixir that sparkled upon the senses sank suavely and healingly through me so that i seemed to draw refreshment with each breath reluctantly i aroused more and more in response to this unusual stimulant which somehow gave delicious rest yet drew me from it into life i could have sworn some one had touched me with some exclamation on my lips i started up to find myself in darkness the lamps i had left lighted burned no longer

this time there was no terror in my awakening no thing of nightmare pressed against my window space the fragrance persisted the ghastly smell of mold and corruption was gone but i wanted light for all that reaching for the lamp beside me on its stand i found the little chain i felt the chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that should have meant light but no answering brightness sprang up instead across the dark came a voice a voice low-pitched soft without weakness keen with exultation victory victory you have no need of light who conquered in darkness the enemy has fled it has covered the unspeakable eyes from the eyes of a man by the will of a man its will has been forbidden it has dragged itself back to the barrier and cower's there for this time oh soldier on the dreadful frontier be proud putting off your armor to-night be proud and rest those practical people who are never unnerved by the intangible may gauge if they can the weirdness of this address following my first experience and then smile their contempt of me for I confess to a moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that of the woman who had trailed her braid of hair into my grasp,

the night I first slept here. But how did she know of the things visit to me? I had not spoken, nor uttered a cry throughout its visitation. How could she have knowledge of that silent struggle between it and me, or of my escape so narrowly won? how unless she too i groped for a glass of water left on my stand i drank and felt my dry throat relax who are you i asked a sigh trembled toward me i am one who stands on the threshold of your beautiful world as a traveler stands outside a lighted palace gazing where she may not enter and feel the winter about her do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool i said brusquely you are a woman the woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands not long ago to save herself from capture

yes yet i am neither more nor less real than the one which came for you a while since then my nightmare was real a thing of flesh and blood or clever mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it. The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool melancholy. Real? What is real? she challenged me. Turn to the sciences that you should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a million years, men have been a million years. Men have vowed you to touch empty air. They saw and felt it empty, but now a child knows air swarms with life. In that thin nothingness, crowd and move the distributors of death, disease, health, vigor,

existence itself. The water you have just tasted is pure and clear in the glass? Pure? Each drop is an ocean of inhabits. clean and unclean i speak commonplaces but is there no knowledge not yet commonplace oh man with all the unfathomed universe about us dare you pronounce what is real what is natural i began she interrupted me doubtless what is not natural cannot and does not exist have you then measured nature he was a great thinker one of deep knowledge who compared man to a child wandering on the shore of a vast ocean and picking up a pebble here and there of what would you convince me and why of what danger why would you watch a man enter a jungle where some hideous beast crouched in ambush why you neither warned nor armed him i am here to turn you back i am the native of that country who runs to cry warning to a stranger to put into his hand the weapon of understanding so solemn so urgent a sincerity was in her voice that again chill touched me the clammy dampness of my garments hung on my limbs as a reminder of the thing real or unreal

that twice had made its presence felt beyond denial. Wild as her words might be, their incredible suggestion was matched by my experience. I saw it with my eyes for her, before answering. The room was dark, yet the darker bulk of furniture loomed out enough to be distinguishable. No figure was visible, even traced by the direction of her voice. I was certain that any movement to seek her would mean her flight.

Do you mean that you want me to go away from this place? I questioned. The sigh came again, just audibly. Yes, why should you die? Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful? Did I not hear a wistful reluctance in her tone? Excitement ran along my veins. like burning oil on flowing water the woman hidden in the dark the association of her voice with the strange exquisite fragrance I breathed the thought of beauty in her born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized all blended in a spell of human magic I have said I was a man much alone and a lame man who craved adventure just now I said I said you spoke of some victory you called me soldier is it not victory to have driven back the dark one is he not a soldier who aroused in the night to meet dreadful assault sets his face to the enemy and battles front to front

before the eyes men and women have died or lost reason or fled across half the world broken by fear what are the wars of men man with man, compared with a man's battle against the unknown. I honor you. I salute you. But, soldier alone on the forbidden frontier, go. Join your fellows in the world allotted to you. Live, nor seek to tread where mankind is not sent. How can there be wrong in facing a situation that I did not cause? there is no wrong there is danger what danger i persisted can you ask me she retorted with a hint of impatience you who have felt its groped toward your inner spirit i shuddered remembering the brush of those antenna exploring examining but i persisted beyond my everyday nature her speech was for me like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed the Norseman to war fury.

You say I came off Victor, I reminded her. Yes, but can you conquer again and again and again? Will you not feel strength fail, health break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn down by the thing that knows no weariness, and fall its prey at last? It will come, often? Until one conquers, it will come? I forced away a qualm of panic.

How can you know, I demanded. Ask me not, I do know. But look here, I argued, if, as you say, this creature was not meant to meet man How can it come after me this way?" She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance, Because, two centuries ago one of the race of man here broke through the awful barrier that rears a wall between humankind and those dark forms of life to which it belongs.

For know that a human will to evil can force a breach in that barrier, which those on the other side never could pass without such aid i neither understood nor believed at least i told myself that i did not believe her wild legendary explanation of the nightmare thing that visited me i did not want to believe neither did i wish to offend her by saying so you will go she presently mistook my silence for surrender you are wise as well as brave good go with you good walk beside you in that happy world where you live wait i cried sharply her voice had seemed to recede from me a retreating whisper at the last word no i will not go i must i will know more of you you are no phantom who are you Where? When can I see you in daylight? Never. Why not? I came to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given. But you will come again? Never.

What? The thing will come, and not you? What have I to do with it? Who am more helpless before you? it than you. Go and give thanks that you may. Listen, I commanded, as firmly as I could. I am not going away from this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me half convinced of what I should do. I can stay no longer. Why can you not come again? You plan to trap me, she reproached.

No, word of honor. You shall come and go as you please. I will not make a movement toward you. Not try to see me even, she hesitated. Not even that, if you forbid. There was a long pause. perhaps drifted to me a faint distant word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree branches and flutter through my room she was gone there sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike me intent as i was upon the girl twice i spoke to her receiving no reply before judging that i might rise without breaking my promise

then i recognized the click of a moment before as that of the electric switch beside my door no doubt she had turned off my lights at her entrance and now restored them i pulled the chain of my reading lamp and this time light flashed over the room i had known no one would be there and no one was yet i was disappointed as i drew on my dressing-gown i heard a clock downstairs strike four not a breath or a step stirred in the house the damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows bringing scents of tansy and bittersweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room the melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mold and decay i sat down at my desk to wait beside the lamp for the coming of sunrise end of chapter six recording by roger maline chapter seven of the thing from the lake this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger malign The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram Chapter 7

For it is well known that Paris and such delicate beings live upon sweet odors as food, but all evil spirits abominate perfumes. Oriental mythology The breakfast bell, or rather fill it as Chinese chimes, merrily summoned me to the dining room. a homely spell to exercise the phantoms of the night my little cousin rosy beyond belief trim in white middy blouse and blue skirt was already in her place behind the coffee-pot veer sat opposite her at the round table they were holding hands across the rolls and bacon and eggs their glances interlocked in a shining content that made my solitariness rather dulled rather dulled with a shining content that made my solitariness rather

drab and dull to my own contemplation. At my clumsy step, the picture dissolved, of course. Veer rose, while Philida welcomed me to my chair, and went into a young housewife's pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs. The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big brindle cat purred on the windowsill beside Philida.

No dainty Persian or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail proved him a battling cat of ring experience. I plan to have a wee white kitten, Phil explained, while putting a saucer of milk before the feline toff. One that would wear a ribbon, you know. you remember cousin roger how mother always forbade pets because she believed animals carried germs i meant to have a puss if ever i had a home of my own this one just walked into the kitchen on the first day we came here ethan said it was a lucky sign when a cat came to a new home he gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we had brought for lunch and it stayed

so i decided to keep it instead of a kitten it really is more cat what footing was here for dreary terrors in a mirror across the room i glimpsed my own countenance looking quite as usual no overnight white hairs appeared no upstanding look such as the legend gave to sir cintram after he met the little master after the meal veer asked me to walk over to the lake with him we strolled through the old orchard toward the dam this was my side of the house in passing i looked up at the window against which the thing had seemed to press itself with sickening lust for me philida was framed in the open square and shook a dust-cloth at us by way of greeting and evidence of her business The wide, shallow lake lay almost without movement, except at the head of the dam. There the water poured over with foam and tumult, an amber-brown cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush on below in a winding stream that grew calmer as it flowed. "'We must put our lake in order, veer,' I observed as we stood on a knoll at the head of the dam,

all this growth of rank vegetation ought to be pulled up the banks grated and turfed perhaps the bottom cleaned up water-lilies would look better than cat-tails to my surprise he did not assent instead he set his foot on a boulder and rested his arm upon his knee looking into the clear water mr locke i just about hate saying what i have to he told me in his sober leisurely fashion i expect you won't like it not at all well best said before you get deeper in i can't see my way to make farming this place pay i was bitterly disappointed even at the worst estimate of veer i had imagined i had imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor Philida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few weeks. But the call of New York, of the lounge-lizards case and unhealthy excitement, had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all. The blow was too sore.

There are two few acres of arable land, and they're used up. VIR was continuing. I've seen plenty of impoverished run-out farms in New England. You could pour money into the soil out of a gold pitcher these five years to come, before it began to pay you back, and then your money might better have been put anywhere in bank, for profit. I saw that the first week here. Since then, I've been looking around for something better to do.

and have found it of course i said bitingly or else you would be drawing your salary as manager and saying nothing to me of all this well where does poor phil go and when he turned his dark-curled head and regarded me with calm surprise i didn't exactly know that my wife was going anywhere mr locke what you do not mean to leave the farm not unless you're tired of our bargain i've been calculating how to make it pay that won't be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a wagon-load into town if you think i'm wrong call in any practical man who knows this sort of business we've got to think closer to win here that's why i'd like to set the lake to work instead of just prettying it up the lake veer there isn't enough water-power over the dam to do any more than run a toy is there he motioned me nearer to where he stood gazing down notice what kind of water this is mr locke brown like forest water sort of green-lighted because the bottom is like turf neither mud nor sand but a kind of under-water moss you see it's pure and clean with a little fishy smell about it matter of fact it is forest water comes from way off yonder the stream does before it spreads out into our lake here i borrowed a boat and followed back two miles before it got too shallow for me boys have caught trout here three times since i've been watching

well my father was fishwarden in our district i learned the business if you're willing i can start some trout raising that ought to pay well you know the state is glad to help game preserving free he proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the subject in his quiet unpretentious manner producing notes and diagrams from his pockets he had written to various authorities and exhibited their replies he knew exactly what the state would do what he himself must do and what investment of money would be required i listened to him in admiration and astonishment from fish raising he went on to discuss each acre of the farm its best use in view of its situation condition and our needs we could afford so much labor it appeared and no more we must have certain apparatus methodically listed with prices if we used a certain sheltered southfield for a peach orchard the trees planted should be such an age and have giant powder-blast deep beds for them in order that they might soon bear fruit. When at last he ended his deceptive speech

that sounded so lazy, while implying so much energy, and turned his black eyes from the papers on his knee to my face. I had been routed long since. Veer, I said abruptly, did you know that I thought you were going to desert the farm when you began to speak? He nodded.

Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me, haven't had any occasion to. You don't judge me a fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would anyone else yet. He began to gather his papers together, his attention divided with them while he finished his answer.

There will be plenty of time before that yet run. runs out. Mighty pleasant time, thanks to you, Mr. Locke. Philida and I expect to enjoy building things up as much as we'll enjoy it after they're all built. Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the more, because I know how you feel. Now, if you'd be interested to look over these plans, or submit them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection, I'll just turn them over to you. you. He had so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt ungenerous, but I would not lie to him. I am a queer fellow, Veer, I said.

Leave that to time, as you say. As for the plan, they are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been my way to phone for an expert when anything was to be done, or to buy what I fancied and pay the bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate and cost.

Keep them, and carry them out as soon as that may be done. You are master here, not I. we walked back together through the sun and freshness of the early spring morning as we neared the house phillita's voice hailed us she was at my window again leaning out with her hair wind ruffled about her face cousin roger she summoned me i have found out what makes your room as sweet as a garden of spices see what it is to be a composer completely surrounded by roger royalties, able to buy the most gorgeous scents to lay on one's pillow, and all enclosed in antique gold. She held up some small object that shone in the sunlight. "'Throw it down!' I begged, startled into excitement. She complied, laughing.

Veer sprang forward, but I made a quicker step and caught the thing. It was one of those. filigree balls of gold rot into open work, about the size of a walnut that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon and call a pommender. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence, supposed to be reviving in case my lady felt a swoon or me grim about to overwhelm her, as ladies did in past centuries, and do no longer. Whose gentle pity had brought this pommender to my pillow to help me from that faintness which had followed my struggle with the thing whose was the exquisite individual fragrance contained in the ball i held i had a vision of a figure surely light and soft of movement haloed with such matchless hair as the braid i had captured stealing step by timid step across my room within my reach while i lay inert

perhaps her face had bent near mine in her doubt of my life or death hidden eyes had studied me in the scanty starlight oh for ethan veer's good looks and athletes grace to lure my lady from her masquerade where did you buy it cousin roger fess up philett his merry voice coaxed me it was given to me i slowly answered i cannot offer it to you phil but i will buy any other pretty thing you fancy instead next time i go to town she made a gesture of disclaim i did not mean that only do tell me what the perfume is i was going to ask if you knew no something very expensive and imported i suppose perhaps whoever gave it to you had it made for herself alone as some wealthy women do it is the most clinging yet delicately refreshing scent i ever met tuburos suggested veer drawls no how can you like an old-fashioned funeral she cried tubarose didn't always go to funerals he corrected her teasingly as she made a face at him i remember them growing in my aunt bethsheba's garden creamy-looking posies kind of kin to a gardinia seems to me thick peddled like white plush and holding their sweet smell everlastingly but mr locke's perfumery isn't just that either there was something else grew in that garden i can't call to mind what i mean basal maybe

the basal plant that feeds on dead men's brains quoted phil with a mock shiver you are happy in your ideals drawls he laughed well that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up in the sun mornings and so does this little gilt ball i'll guess mr locke's lady never got it from france smells like old new england there was no reason why a vague chill should creep over me or the sunshine seemed to darken as if a thin veil drifted between me and the surrounding brightness let me say again that no place could have been more unlike the traditional haunted house there hung about it no sense of morbidity or depression yet what was i to think i was not sick or mad, and the thing had come to me twice. I turned from the married lovers and made my way to the veranda, where I might be alone to consider the pommender whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence walking beside me. Seated there in one of the deep willow chairs, Philida had cushioned, in peacock chintz, and marked especially mine by laying my favorite magazines on its arm,

i studied my new trophy of the night there was a satisfaction in its material solidity it was real enough resting in my palm yes but it was not ordinary among its quaint kind as i picked out the design of the gold work that fact was borne in upon my mind here was no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts the small sphere was belted with the signs of the zodiac beautiful in minute perfection all the rest of the globe was covered with lace fine work repeating one group of characters over and over i was not learned enough to tell what the characters were but the whole plainly belonged to those strange outcast academies of astrology alchemy magic and in short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish ball, originally a scented paste, rolled round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the gold. Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom? What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why muffle her identity in mystery?

Why the indefinable quaintness of language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from even the college-bred philadas? She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her, wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the thing and the warning come to others of our household group? Veer, Philida, the Swedish woman, Christina, all had lived here for weeks without any experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but the house. The danger, then, was only for me? Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm?

The gray cat came purring about me and presently. leaped upon my knee. On impulse, I offered the pommender to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with convulsive pleasure. It breathed with that thirsty eagerness for the scent so familiar to my own senses. Better than catnip bagheera, I questioned. You wouldn't bolt from it either,

you? Philida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the pommender in my waistcoat pocket. I could not deny as mere nightmare the thing which had visited me. Better confront that fact. It was real. Only real in what sense what human agency could produce an effect so frightful an illusion so hideous that i could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation a truth hinted at by alchemists pythagorean's rosicrucians pale students of sorcery and a girl told the truth of a child magnificent charlatans these many centuries? Were there other races between earth and heaven? Strange tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives and ours were fixed barriers not to be

crossed? Had I met one of these beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting its victim by methods unknown to us? Was I a cheated fool or a prisoner on the borders of a new country? Could I meet that thing tonight and tomorrow night? Could I bear the agony of its presence, the stench of death and corruption that was its atmosphere? At the mere memory my forehead grew wet. The postman's buggy,

had stopped at our mailbox. Philida ran down to meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the man to sort our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard to make a woman happy, I mused. A man might attempt it with hope, if he could but persuade her to try him.

My lady had promised to come, again. Perhaps with patience. Philida came across the lawn with an armful of gaudy-covered catalogs and a handful of letters. Catalogs for Ethan, letters for you, she called in advance of her arrival. What an important person you are, Cousin Roger. It always gives me a quivery thrill to realize who you are as well as how nice you are. now isn't that a jumbled speech to tumble out of me i took her tanned little hand along with the letters letters that were so many voices summoning me back to pleasant busy manhattan it is a fine speech for a humble person to answer phil but does that sort of thing matter to you women what do you love veer for at bottom because he is strong and supple and as curly hair? No, as she shook her head. Because he has worn the uniform then,

proved his courage in war at sea, because he had the glamour about him of real adventure and cabaret glitter, or because he took you away from a life you hated? Or perhaps because he is kind and loves you? No, for none of these reasons? Why then love Ethan Veer? she stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated denial and smiled at me triumphantly because he is ethan veer she promptly responded oh cousin roger you clever people are so stupid it would not make any difference at all if drawls were ugly or never had been a sailor or could not skate or do things or had not been able to make me happy it is something very much bigger than all that and all the divorce courts phil the breach of promise suits and the couples who make each other miserable but they never had anything she said perhaps they will have it some day don't you know cousin roger that the most important things in the world are those most people never know about i was not sure whether i was not sure whether i was not sure whether i was knew that or not. After last night, I was not sure of many things. Still, if such gifts were given as she believed, if it was merely a question of being Ethan Veer or Roger Locke.

But I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure. End of Chapter 7. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 8 of The Thing from the Lake this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter eight the heart is a small thing but desireth great matters it is not sufficient for a kite's dinner yet the whole world is not sufficient for it hugo de anima that evening veer and i settled the business details of the developments he had planned. Also, while we three were quietly together, I launched a discussion that had been gathering in my mind all day while I watched Philida. You are doing as efficient work as Veer, I told her. In fact, you are a most moderate pair.

I gave you an open bank account, Phil, and you have furnished the house for so little that I am amazed. and it is all so gay, so freshly pretty. Being an ignorant man, the details are beyond me. But one servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard? I had expected you to need several. Of course we are not counting Veer's outdoor force. She turned in her low chair beside the lamp

and glanced toward the window behind her, before replying. i noticed the action because a moment before veer had turned precisely the same way it is good of you to think of those things cousin roger she declared but i want to be a real wife to drawls i do indeed and i have it all to learn because i was not brought up for that look at this dish-towel i am hemming christina would laugh at the stitches if she dared yet they are better than when i began some day i shall sew fine things so it is with all my housekeeping i think we should begin as we mean to go on so i have furnished the house for us perhaps if it had been for you alone i should have chosen satin wood and tapestry instead of willow and cretan the same way about christina if ethan and i are to save and earn this lovely place as you offered we cannot afford more than one maid you understand what i am trying to explain don't you yes i assented surely what were you looking for just now behind you i oh nothing i just fancied some one had passed by the window and stared in

i can't imagine what made me fancy that unless the cat she hesitated bagheera is asleep under mr locke's chair veer observed casually truly cousin roger i love the way we're living she resumed it is very miserable of me i dare say not to be more intellectual after all father and mother labored with me but it is so i want to live this way all my life to be busy and planned things with ethan and make them come true together under cover of the table she put her hand into veers and silence held us a little while. I watched Bagheera, the cat, who sat beside my chair, staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room. Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes? A wary readiness in gathered limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now the tail twitched with a lashing movement. Presently Bagheera looked away. and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled down, composing himself to sleep.

"'You like the place, Phil?' I questioned. "'You do not find it lonely here, or in any way depressing?' The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds had visited her. "'Cousin, Roger, this darling house? Why?' i passed that question safely and after a few minutes bade them good-night they had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together as i made my solitary way upstairs i will not deny a growing excitement or that dread fought with my resolution who would keep trist with me to-night the horror or the lady both as each time before if so which one would come first and what might be my measure of success or failure if some trick were being played upon me i meant to pluck it out of the mystery the quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual i lighted the lamps and sat down to my work the house was still by ten o'clock all lights out except mine

at midnight i lay down in the dark the pommender under my pillow whether i put the gold ball there from sentiment or from some absurd fancy about its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil or because i feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night i should be troubled to answer i did place it there and lay lapped in its sweet odor while the moments dragged past heavy slow-footed movements of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope uneasy as fear the cock crowed for the first hour and for the second i slept at last when i awoke level sun rays were striking across the world nothing had happened end of chapter eight recording by roger maline chapter nine of the thing from the lake this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter nine these macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade plutarch next morning i took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood there proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady could be lodged however i made my cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless resolved to leave no chance untried

no better plan occurred to me than exhibition of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair but nowhere did a native show recognition of the top or the description on my way home i overtook a familiar travel-stained buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities why had i not put my question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning surely here was a man who knew every one and went everywhere the old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside. The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded to me. "'Mourning, Mr. Locke,' he greeted. "'Now, let me get the right stuff into this here box, and I'll sort your family's stuff right out for you.

There's a sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill them, for Cliff Brown here that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know, but Cliff's poultry 'd thank me to leave it be. Up it's got to come, though. Will it make them lay? I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering into the sack.

I guess it might, if Cliff told him they'd have to lay or eat it, judging from the smell that sample's put in my bag. Not as sweet as this, I suggested, and leaned across to lay the pot. pommender in his gnarled hand. The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an elixir of delight.

He said nothing, absorbed in sensation. Do you know of a lady who wears that scent? I asked. A lady with bright, fair hair, colored like copper bronze? not i he denied briefly no one at all like that with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold color and a lot of it no not around here nor anywhere i've been what do you call this perfumery mr locke i have no idea i answered sharply disappointed no one knows except the young lady i'm trying to find Are you sure you cannot help me at all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house who might be the one I am looking for?

He shook his head, giving back the pommender with marked reluctance. No one who might be able to tell more than yourself, I persisted. A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr. Clifford Brown's mill, box and began to sort out my letters. Far as that goes, I guess Miss Hill don't miss much of what goes on around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and she goes driving all day. Ain't a house she knows that don't get to hear the whole yarn.

You know Miss Royal Hill? Miss Veer gets butter and cheese from her, might ask her. I thanked him and drove on. Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called that morning, inviting me into her parlor to set when she had identified me.

But she knew nothing of the object of my quest. i guessed you must be the new owner up the mitchell place she observed her beady faded brown eyes busy with my appearance picking up details in avid darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking crumbs cliff brown said a lame feller had bought it i don't see as that little limp cripples you much the way you can rumpus round in that fast automobile of yours now i'm perfectly sound and i wouldn't be paid to drive the thing you'd ought to get the other fellow to run it for you the handsome one i guess you like to do it though writer ain't you books or newspapers i rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack music she echoed her narrow sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just fooling me.

Seems I never heard of having a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show them off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny, taking your company upstairs to play for him. But then it's kind of a funny thing for a man to take to, anyhow. I get a niece, ten years old next August, who can play piano-themed. so good, there don't seem anything left to learn her. So...

But there ain't no use of you driving round here looking for a fair-headed girl, Mr. Locke. The Slav folk down in the shanties, by the post-road, are about the only light-complected ones in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to plain brown. Senator Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boarding school for vacation. How do you like your place?" "'Very much,' I assured her. Only, I did not know a great deal about it yet. It's history, I mean.

Are there any interesting stories about the house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost story to tell our friends when they come to visit us.' She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking-chair, arms folded on her meager breast. guess you'll have to make one up i never heard a nun the mitchell family always owned it and they were so stiff respectable and upright everyone was scared of em most of the men were clergymen in their time the last reverend cotton mather mitchell went abroad to foreign parts for missionary work with the heathen twenty odd years ago and died there he never married so that the families run out. The Mitchells were awful hard on women, called him vessels of wrath and

beguilers of Adam, preached it right out of the pulpit. So I guess no girl in these parts could have been hired to wed with him if he'd wanted. His mother died when he was born, so he had had no softening influence. After news came of his death, the house was shut up till you bought it. My, how you've changed it already. I'd admire to go through it. When I had invited her to call on Philida and inspect our domicile, and paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the car. All this land round here is old and full of Indian relics, she remarked. Over to the sound, where the swamps used to be, there was lots of

fighting with savages. And they say a witch was stoned to death where the Catholic convent stands now, on the road up above your place? So I guess you can figure out a story to tell your company if you like. A convent, I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. Do they perhaps have visitors there, ladies in retreat for a time, as convents often do abroad? mrs hill laughed shaking her tightly combed head no hope of your girl there she chuckled they're the strictest sisterhood in america folks say poor clairs i think they're called no one not even their relations ever see their faces after they join they're not allowed to talk to each other even just stay in their cells and pray even in their cells and pray even in the middle of the night, and shave their heads, and live on a few vegetables and dry bread. I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would harbor my lady of marvelous tresses and

magical perfume, of wild fancies and heretical theories. That thought of mine was indeed far afield. But where, then, was I next to seek? I made a detour and used some strategy to gain a view of the senator's daughters they proved to be brunettes who wore their locks cropped after the fashion of certain greenwich villagers my disappointment was not great my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss but i had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bron's head whose royalty of hair i had shorn as the traitors shore king childerick's gothic locks i drove home with a sense of blankness upon me suppose she never came again suppose the episode was ended not even freedom from the thing could compensate for the baffled adventure think of the lame feller with an adventure end of chapter nine recording by roger maline chapter ten of the thing from the lake this libervok's recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter ten plato expresses four kinds of mania firstly the musicals musical secondly the telestic or mystic thirdly the prophetic and fourthly that which belongs to love preface to zanoni

for myself i have always found that excitement stimulates imagination there are others i know who can do no creative work except when all within and without is lulled and calm perhaps i have too much calm as an ordinary thing. That evening, when I went to my room, lighted my lamps and closed my door, I stood alone for a while, breathing the mingled sweetness of the country air and the pomever ball. In that interval, there came to me, complete and whole as a gift thrust into my hand, the melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured me has reached every ear in America. As to that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic about it. For myself, I cannot hear it, ground on a street organ, given on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately rendered by an orchestra,

without feeling again the exaltation and enchantment of that night. I flung myself down at my writing table, tossing my former work right and left to make room for this. If it should escape before I set it down, if the least of those airy cadences should be lost. At three o'clock in the morning, I came back to realization of time and place. The composition was finished.

It stood up before me like a flower raised overnight. eight hours had passed since i sat down to the work after dinner i was tired as i began to draw into a pile the sheets of paper i had covered with notes weariness gripped me like a hand eight hours if i had shoveled in a ditch twice that long i could have felt no more exhausted yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body i dropped my head upon the arm I folded upon the table. My hot, strained eyes closed with relief. My stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content flowed over me. My work was done and good.

Rest passed into sleep, no doubt. The sleep could not have been long, for not many hours remained before dawn. When I started awake and lifted my head, I found the room in darkness. A perfume was in the air, and the sense of a presence scarcely more tangible than the perfume.

Even in the first dazed moment I knew my lady had come again. Do not rise, her murmuring voice cautioned me. Unless you wish me to go? No! I am here because I promised to come. it was not wise of you to ask that of me then i prefer folly to wisdom i answered steadying myself to full wakefulness or rather i am not sure that you can decide for me which is which

why after all why just curiosity you who speak so learnedly of magic and sorcery i retorted smiling under cover of the darkness, have you never heard of the white magic conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a voice sweeter than the perfume? An image of wax does not melt before a witch's fire so easily as a man before these things. My hair pleased you? she questioned naively. Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration, I supplemented. i am delighted to prove you human mystic lady please me could anyone fail to be pleased with that most magnificent braid but how can either you or i forgive the cruelty that took it from its owner why did you cut it off so little of it and i did not know you then little that braid

it reached below my knee now it is but little less she answered with indifference we all have such hair i gasped my imagination painted the picture of all that shining richness and wrapping a slim young body it was fantastic beyond belief to sit there at my desk beneath my fingers the tools of sober work-a-day life and stare into the dark dark room that held the reality of my vision. She was there, but I could not rise and find her. She was opposite my eyes, but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and see her. Who are we? I slowly followed her last sentence. A sigh answered me. On the silence, a memory floated to me of the story she had told while I held her prisoner that first night. The woman sits in her low chair. The fire shine is bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side her hair flows down to the floor. Yes, by legend, young witches had such hair.

Silfs, undines, and all the airy race of Lilith. I thrust absurdities away from me and offered a quotation to fill the pause. I met a lady in the meads, full, beautiful, a fairy's child. Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild. She did not laugh or put away the suggestion. When I had decided that she did not mean to reply, and was seeking my mind for new speech to detain her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another quotation.

a spirit one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet neither departed souls nor angels concerning whom josephus and michael sellus of constantinople may be consulted they are very numerous and there is no climate or element without one or more have you read the writings of the learned jew or of the platonist who you are so very bold neither i meekly admitted but neither ancient gentlemen could convince me that you are unhuman her answer was just audible not i but it now i was silenced for dreadful and uncanny was that whisper in the dark to a man who had met here in this room what i had met tell me more of this thing without a tell me more of this thing without a name i urged mastering my reluctance to evoke even the idea of what the blood curdled to recall why does it hate me what can i tell you even in your world does not evil hate good as naturally as good recoils from evil but this one has another cause also she hesitated and you yourself how have you challenged and mocked it this very night here where it glooms you have dared bring the high joy of the artist who creates oh brave brave he who could await alone the visit of the unspeakable in the chamber into which the loathsome eyes have looked and write the music of hope and beauty

i started with a hot rush of surprise and pleasure she had heard my work she approved it more than that not to her was i the lame fellow who ought to get a better man to drive his car nor should you who have two worlds of your own she added in a lower tone doubt the existence of many both dark and bright go then out of this whole haunted place where a human madness broke through the barrier be satisfied with the victories you have had let the visits of the dark one fade into mere nightmare and know i am no more a living woman than franina who was she have you not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared in paris the philosopher de cart accompanied by the figure of a beautiful woman she moved spoke and seemed life itself but descartes declared she was an automaton a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made yet many refused to believe his story declaring he had by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this form he called her franchina his daughter and the truth i have told you all the record tells she was soon lost descart took her with him upon a journey by sea when a storm arising the superstitious captain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into the mediterranean thank you but are you fairy or automaton

do not laugh she exclaimed with sudden passion you know i would say that i have no part in the world of men and women not through me shall the ancient dread seize a new life a little time now then the doors will close upon me as the sea closed over froncina i will not take with me the memory of a wrong done to you i shall never come to this house after to-night If you would give me a happiness, promise me you will leave too. I had known we should come to this point. After a moment I spoke as quietly as I could. Tell me your name. She had not expected that question. I think she might have withheld the answer, given time to reflect.

But as it was, she replied docile as a. bidden child desire Mitchell the name fell quaintly on both hearing and fancy with a rustle of early New England tradition desire I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction before I answered her thank you now I Roger Locke do promise you desire Mitchell that I will not leave this house I until these matters are plainer to my understanding whether you go or stay but if you go and come no more then i surely shall stay until i find a way to trace you or until the thing kills me no yes there was a pause then to my utter dismay i heard her sobbing through the dark why do you tempt me she reproached is it not hard enough my duty for me it is such pleasure to be here to leave for a while the loneliness and chill of my narrow place but you so rich in all things free and happy how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark speaks or is silent let me go

wonder and exulting sense of power filled me i can keep you then i asked i am so weak desire mitchell i am as alone as you can be in my real life i have gone apart from much that occupies men and women gaining and losing in different ways one of the gains is freedom to dispose of myself without grief or loss to anyone except the perfunctory regret of friends will you believe there is no risk that i would not take for a few hours with you even with your voice in the dark come to me as you can let us take what time we may and the chances be mine but that is folly you do not know to protect you i must go i refuse the protection stay if there is sorrow in knowing you i accept it i understand nothing i only beg you not to turn me back to the commonplace emptiness of life before i found you indeed i will not be sent away if i yield you will reproach me some day never it could only be like this that we should speak a few times before the gates close upon me. What gates?

I cannot tell you. Very well, I took what the moment would grant me. That is a bargain. Yet what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no more about yourself? Very well. Tell me something more about the enemy in the dark whom I am to meet.

You have hinted that it has a special motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind. What is that motive? Ask me not, she faintly refused me. I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback in the way. this combat? Arm me with a little understanding. What moves it against me? The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil, her struggle against some terrible reluctance. So painful was that effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my hearing jealousy jealousy of what for whom for me

the monstrous implication sank slowly into my understanding then brought me erect gripping the edge of the table lest i forget restraint and move toward her by what right i cried by what claim desire mitchell what has the horror to do with you the vehemence and heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room distinct as the shattering of crystal there was no answer no movement no rebuke of my movement i was alone with that confession she had fled my cry had been louder than i knew presently i heard a door open steps sounded along the hall from the rooms on the opposite side of the house some one knocked hesitatingly are you all right mr locke veer's voice came through the panels i crossed to the door and opened it he stood at the threshold an electric torch in his hand we thought you called he apologized i thought maybe you were sick or wanted something and no light showed around your door i found the wall switch and turned on the lamps as on the last occasion she had switched the lights off there beyond my reach unless i broke my promise not to move about the room while she remained my guest come in i invited him much obliged to you and philida for looking me up i had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair with a nightmare as the result

it was pleasant to have his normal presence prosaic in bathrobe and pajamas in my cheerfully lighted room his dark eyes glanced toward the music scrawled papers scattered about then returned to meet my eyes smilingly we heard some of the work he admitted phil and i well i guess we were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over i never listened to a tune that took hold a tune that took hold on the tune that took hold on the floor took hold of me kind of like that one we'd certainly prize hearing all of it together sometime if you didn't mind the warmth of achievement flowed again in me I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheets answering him with one of those expressions of thanks artists used to cloak modestly their sleek inward vanity I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me back to the reality of my own world.

Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small, square script, quaint as the pommender, was written a quotation strange to me. We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level throne and pant like climbers. I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Veer answered them. so we do i guess there is more panting over shadows and less real mountain climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe most roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a fuss about

who wrote that mr locke i don't know i replied vaguely intent upon desire mitchell's meaning in leaving this to me he nodded and turned leisurely to go kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote that piece to-night he observed diffidently as if trouble did not amount to much taken right i'll get back to phil now she might be anxious could that be what desire had meant me to understand was there indeed some quality of courage that is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money and popularity went to the publisher under the title shadows of hills of course no one connected the illusion the general interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first printing a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe containing two young persons i was well pleased to have it so but in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose shadow i panted and strove or was my foot indeed upon the mountain itself i did not know i do not know now end of chapter ten recording by roger maline chapter eleven of the thing from the lake This Libervox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Roger Maline The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram Chapter 11 If the dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the other world. Oniro Critica Achmetis In the morning I drove down to New York. affairs demanding attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my overnight work into the

hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened with that instinct strong within me. The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely driving through the friendly, crowded streets was an exhilaration. The practical employment of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening, I turned toward Connecticut with a feeling of leaving home behind me. But I would not stay away from the house for a night,

risking that Desire Mitchell might come and find me missing. She might believe I had been seized by cowardice and deserted. She might never return. I will not deny that I had lied. to her. There was no intention in me of accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to snatch her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the wholesome sunlight where Philida flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. But it was plain that I must tread warily. Once frightened away,

how could she be found? Her home, her history, even her face, were unknown to me. Tracing her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried and failed. Of her connection with the dark thing I refused to think too deeply. Her connection with me must come first. It was not until I passed the cottage of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely in the starlight, where the road made an angle toward the farm, that I recalled our talk in her best room. The Mitchell family always owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Mitchell went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years ago and died there. My lady of the night was Desire Mitchell. A clue?

He never married, so. the family's run out. It was damp here in the hollow where the road dipped down. A chill ran coldly over me. Arrived at the garage which had taken the place of our tumble-down barn, I put the car away as quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I passed through the last village, and our household was asleep. moving without unnecessary noise i crossed to the house bagheera the cat padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs while i stooped to put the latch key in the lock as the key slid in place i heard the waterfall over the dam abruptly change the sound of its flow swelling and accelerating as when a gust of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the dam abruptly change the sound of its flow swelling and accelerating as when a gust of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the bruce drink. But there was no wind. Immediately followed that sound from the lake which I can liken to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing, or the suck of a thick body drawing itself

from a bed of mud. The cat thrust himself violently between my feet, and pressed against the house door, uttering a whimpering mew of urgency. Stardled, I looked in the direction of the direction of the of the lake. At this distance it showed as a mere expanse of darkness, only the reflection of a star here and there revealing the surface as water. What else could be shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying of them, and turned the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall when the door opened wide enough to admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed the door behind us, Now, I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night privileges. Did Philida allow him in the house or not?

After an instance consideration, I bent and picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He should spend the night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his part, until we reached my room. On its threshold, I felt his body stiffen. His yellow eyes snapped open, alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I reflected, amused as I switched on the lights. All right, Bagheera, I spoke soothingly and put him upon the rug.

He bounded erect, fur bristling. tail lashing from side to side after the fashion of a miniature panther when i stooped to stroke him he eluded my hand in a gliding run body crouched ears flattened he sped toward the doorway was through it and gone well i decided he could not be pursued all through the house it would be easier to explain him to philida next morning i was tired pleasantly tired the day had been filled with the enthusiasm and congratulations of my associates with conferences and plans for launching the new music via theatres and advertising it ought to go big they assured me in my optimism of mood i wondered if i had not already driven off the dark thing since the girl had come to me the night passed without it appearing before or afterward perhaps woman timid she exaggerated the danger and it had retreated after the second failure to overpower me i fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing would disturb my rest this night stillness enveloped me absolute desolate desolate silence contained me yet the thought of another scorched against my understanding in a burning communication of intelligence

man it commanded i am here fear and i knew that which was my body did fear to the point of death but that which was myself stood up in revolt crouch it bade crouch pigmy and beg fear the blood crawls in the veins the heart checks the nerves shrink and wither man your life wanes thin and faint down shall your race affront mine my heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept a sluggish current. But there was another force that stiffened to resistance and gathered itself to compact strength within me. No, my thought refused the dark intelligence.

I am not yours. Command your own, not me. Weakling, you have touched that which is mine. into my path you have dared step back for in my breath you die the air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous with more and more difficulty my heart labored confused memories came to me of men found dead in their beds in haunted rooms would morning find me so better that way than to yield to the thing better i struggled erect or fancied so now i saw myself as one who stood with folded arms fronting a breach in a colossal wall huge immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown distances dully glistening like grey ice, unbroken save in this place.

The grey strand on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the fixed grey twilight. and I was afraid, for my danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when he draws near the supernatural, the ancient fear. I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from me, and fronted my enemy who pressed me hard.

The thing was at the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of its hate beat upon me. From it emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp and mold. "'Puny, earth-dweller, lost here,' its menace-breathed. "'What keeps you from destruction?' for you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagram fixed for you no law has been thrust down trespass is death die then only my will held it from me and i felt that will real and sickened bewilderment i had no strength to answer only the steadfast instinct to oppose

the thing did not pass there in the breach it ravened for me thrust itself toward me pressed against the thin veil of separation between us i saw nothing yet knew where it raised itself gigantic in formlessness more dreadful than any shape its whispered threats broke against me like an evil surf man the prey is mine would you challenge me the woman is mine by the pact of centuries save yourself escape escape the woman startled wonder filled me was i then fighting for desire mitchell out of the air i was answered as if her voice had spoken certainty came to grip me as if with her small hands she had no help but in me if i fell she fell if i stood firm Exultant resolve flared strong and high within me. My will to protect leaped forward. The thing shrank.

It dwindled back through the gap in the barrier. But as it fled, a last venomous message drifted to me. Again and again. Tire but once, pigmy! I was sitting up in bed in my left. lighted room, my fingers clutching the chain of the lamp beside me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond my window? Or was I still dreaming?

I was trembling with cold, drenched as with water, so that my relaxing hand made a wet mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much might have been caused by nightmare. But what sane man had not? nightmares like these. When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments, and wrapped myself in a heavy bathrobe. There was an electric coffee service in my room, kept for occasions when I worked late into the night. I made strong black coffee now, and drank it as near boiling as practicable. Presently the blood again moved warmly in my veins.

Then I knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike a summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure water may be muddied by the passage of some unclean body, body in this atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mould and decay warring with the homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of the pomeander beneath my pillow i was more shaken more exhausted by this encounter with the unknown than by either of my former experiences a fact which drove home the grim farewell of my enemy tire but once pigmy desire herself had foretold that the dark thing would wear me down well perhaps but not without fighting for its victory at least i would be no supine victim

already i had forced my way where where was that barrier before which i had stood awe sank coldly through me at memory of that colossal land where i was pigmy indeed an insolent human intruder upon the unhuman what other shapes of dread stalked and watched beyond that titanic wall by what swollen conceit could i hope to win against them i would not consider escape by flight even if the end had been certain destruction but my head sank to my hands beneath the weight of a profound depression and discouragement It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour superstition sets apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest. At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature and bade monotonously. There was a weakness at the core of my strength. I waged this combat for the sake of Desire Mitchell.

but what was she to whom the thing laid claim by the pact of centuries? Darkness began to tinge with light, pale gray filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness. As day approached, I saw that a fog enfolded the house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my languor, rose, and walked to the nearest window. Something was moving up the slope from the lake, a dim shape about which the fog clung in steamy billows.

My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly. What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom so tall? A moment later, the figure was nearer. near enough to be distinguished as Ethan Veer, bearing several long fishing rods over his shoulder. "'Vir!' I hailed him, with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself. "'Anything going on so early?' He looked up at me, I never saw Veer startled, and came on to stop beneath the window.

Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his black curls, pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed how the mists painted him with a spectral pallor. Good morning, Mr. Locke, he greeted me. Just as I've been thinking, there are some big snapping turtles about the lake and creek. I guess there'd be some war between them and me before that water was safe. for use. One of the fellows dragged a duck under, drowned it, and started feeding right before my eyes just now. We'll have to get a canoe. He nodded Placid Ascent. That'll look pretty on the lake. Philida will like it. But I guess I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight

round some corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch my rifle now. I'd admire to blow that duck-eater's ugly head off. I'll get into some clothes and be right with you, I invited myself to the hunt. I'd like to have you, he replied with his quaint politeness. There were times when I could visualize vire's New England mother as if I had known her.

The human interlude had been enough to dispel the black humors of the night. When I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held the copper-bronze braid and took it into my hand. How vital with youth its crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I thought. Young, too, were its luxuriance and shining color. nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness here, or the passing of musty centuries over the head that had worn this tress. A flood of reassurance rose high in me. Whatever the thing might be, I would trust the girl, desire Mitchell. Yes, and for her, I would stand fast at that barrier until victory declared for the enemy,

or for me. Until it passed me, it should not reach her. I went downstairs to join Veer. The brightening mist was cool and fresh. There was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the morning. End of Chapter 11, recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 12 of The Thing from the Lake.

This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. In Ingram Chapter 12 In vain I called on rest to come and stay. We were but seated at the festival of many covers when one cried, Away!

Rose Garden of Saadi Now I entered a time of experiences differing at every point, yet interwoven closely, so that my days might compare to a rope whose strands are of violently contrasting colors. The rope would be inharmonious, startling to the eye, but strong to bind and hold, as I was bound and held. All day I lived in the wholesome household atmosphere evoked by Veer and philida it is impossible to describe the sunny charm they created about the commonplace our gay simple breakfasts where philida presided in crisp middy blouse or flowered smock where the gray cat sat on the arm of veer's chair speculative yellow eye observant of his master's carving while the swedish christina served us her good food with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood events how perfect a beginning for the day how stale beside our breeze-swept table was any board at which i had ever sat i do declare that i have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my little cousin whom her world had pronounced plain

veer and i basked in her sunbeams gratefully afterward we each had our work of the three veer was the most industrious slow steady and unsparing of himself to a degree that accomplished surprising results philida flitted over the place indoors and out managing the house following veer about driving to village or town with me on purchasing trips for our supplies i did rather more of my own work than usual that summer and consequently had more of the commercial side to employ me a healthy normal life yes until the hours between midnight and dawn i never knew when i lay down at night whether i should sleep until sun and morning overlay the countryside whether the whispering call of desire mitchell would summon me to an hour more exquisite than reality less satisfying than a dream or whether i should leap into consciousness of the loathsome eyes fixed coldly malignant upon me while my enemy's inhuman hate groped toward me across the darkness its presence fouled for my two guests kept their promises if i speak briefly of the coming of the thing during this time i do so because the mind shrinks from past pain it came again and again it craftily used the torture of irregularity in its coming for days there might be a respite then it would haunt me nights in succession until my physical endurance was almost spent i have stood before the breach in that barrier fighting that nightmare duel until the place of colossal desolation last frontier the human race might hope to keep became as well known to me as a landscape on earth

yet the effect of the things assaults upon me never lessened on the contrary the horror gained in strength a dreadful familiarity grew between it and me communication flowed more readily between us with use i will not set down perhaps i dare not set down the intolerable wickedness of its alternate menaces and offered bribes contact with its intelligence poisoned there were nights when it was dumb when all its monstrous power concentrated and bore upon me its will to destroy locked with my will my victory was that i lived in the shadow desire mitchell and i drew closer to one another how can i tell of a love that grew without sight so much of the love of romance and history is a matter of flower-petal complexions heart-consuming eyes satin lips and all the form and color that make beauty how can i make clear a love that grew strong and passionately demanding new delicate coquettries of advance and evasion intimacy of minds like the meeting of eyes and understanding all in the dark the blind might comprehend but the blind have a physical communication we had not touch has enchantments of its own every night near midnight i switched off the lights and waited in the chair at my writing-table where i was accustomed to work if she had not come by two o'clock i learned to know she would not visit me that night i might sleep in that certainty

a strange trist i kept there in the dark listening to the flow of the waterfall from the lake loud in that dead hour stillness or hearing the soft incessant sounds of insect life awake in trees and fields if she came a drift of perfume a movement slight as a curtain stirred by the wind then an hour with such a companion as the ancient magician might have drawn out of the air to his nine mystic lamps strange fantastic tales she told me spun of fancies luminous and frail as threads of glass she could not speak without betraying her deep learning in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern world alchemy astrology geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank to my ignorance which she most gently and politely enlightened when i confessed i learned that the green lion of parasolsis was not a beast but a recipe for making gold that salamander's feather was better known to-day as asbestos and that the emerald table was by no means an article of furniture i give these examples merely by way of illustration on the other side of the shield held between us i soon discovered that she knew no more of modern city life than a little bit of the shield held between us-i soon discovered that she knew no more of modern city life than a little more of modern city life than a well-taught child who has never left home. She listened eagerly to accounts of theaters and restaurants. The history of Philida and Ethan Veer seemed to her more moving and wonderful

than any story she could tell me. I was amazed and humbled to find that she rated my ability to make music as a lofty art among the occult sciences. Of the evil thing that haunted me, came to say little. To press her with questions meant to end her visit, I found by experience. When I spoke of that strand between the barrier and the gray mist-hidden sea, her passion of distress closed all intercourse with the plea that I go away at once, while escape was possible, while life remained mine. So, for the most part, I curbed my tongue and my consuming curiosity. not from consideration but of necessity one night i asked her how the dark thing spoke to me by what medium of communication

spirits of all orders can speak to man in every language so long as they are face to face she answered with a faint surprise at my lack of knowledge when they turn to man they come into use of his language and no longer remember their own but as soon as they turn from man they resumed their own language and forget his but they themselves are unaware of this fact for they utter thought to thought by direct intelligence so if angel or demon turns his back to you roger you may not make him hear you though you call with great force how do you know that desire but by simple reading do not enemoser and many writers recorded have you spoken to such beings desire the question was rash but it escaped me before i could check the impulse to my relief she answered without resentment no no the thing the enemy that comes to me has never spoken to you no i was silent in amazement and incredulity the The dark creature claimed her, she declared herself helpless to escape from that dominion into normal life, and yet it had never spoken to her? It spoke to me, a stranger most ignorant, and not to the Cirrus, who was familiar with its

existence, and the lore which linked humanity to its fearful kind. You do not believe me, her voice came quietly across my thoughts. I believe you, of course. i stammered i was only astonished you have described it and the barrier so often from the first night i supposed you had seen all i have and more all you have seen now tell me with what eyes you have seen the barrier and the far frontier the eyes of the body or that vision by which man sees in a dream and which is to the sight as the speech of spirits is to the hearing i suppose with the inner sight then understand me when i say that i have seen with the eyes of another by a sight not mine and yet my own you mean i floundered in vague doubts and jealousy of her human associations of which i knew nothing you mean hypnotism she laughed with half-sad raillery how shall i answer you roger once upon a time the jewel called beryl was thought unrivalled as a mirror into which a magician might look to see reflected events taking place at a distance or reflections of the future

but by and by magicians grew wiser they found any crystal would serve as well as a beryl later still they found a little water poured in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand showed as true a phantasm so one wrote there is neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy but the magic is in the seer himself well desire well roger if to see with the sight of another is hypnotism then every man who writes a book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist every historian who makes us see the past is a necromancer you read of the thing no she replied after a long pause i knew it through sympathy with one who died as a long pause i knew it through sympathy with one who died as i would not have you to die my friend roger of whom i shall think long in that place to which i go presently question me no more when the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a pommender into the fire i will never do that no well you might keep the pommender which is pure gold and graved with ancient signs and the name of the shining dawn Dahanah in sanskrit characters also the perfume it contains is precious being blent with the herb vervein which is powerful against evil spirits it is not the pommender that i should keep nor the pommender that holds the powerful spell you value the braid so much

i value only one other beauty as highly yes roger yes desire and that beauty is she who wore the braid now the darkness in the room was dense yet i thought i sensed a movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird's wing the fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her past But when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting, she had gone. I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness than my little cousin Philida, and no maid more exact in carrying out orders than Christina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the quietest roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too, with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust overlaying the writing-table on the following morning.

And in the dust was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair. A slim hand it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd size of the whole affair my hand covered it without brushing an outline i could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander but i could put its evidence with their witness of desire mitchell's reality end of chapter twelve recording by roger maline chapter thirteen of the thing from the lake this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter thirteen for may not the devil send to their fantasy their senses being dulled and as it were asleep such hills and glissoring courts whereunto he pleaseth to delude them king james's demonology now i have to record how i walked into the oldest snare in the world perhaps it was the sense of her near presence brought home to me by her hand-print on the table so close to where my hand rested

perhaps it was her speech of presently leaving me to return no more or perhaps both these joined in urging on my determination to learn more of desire mitchell before some unknown bar for fell between us. I only know that I passed into a mood of trapped exasperation at my helplessness and lack of knowledge. It seemed imperative that I should act to save us both, act soon and surely, yet inaction was bound upon me by my ignorance. Who was she? Where did she live? What bond held her subject to the thing from the barrier. What gates were to close between us? Why could she not put her hand in mind, any night, and let me take her away from this haunted place? Why, at least, not come to me in the light, and let me see her face to face? I was a man groping in a labyrinth, while outside something precious to him as being stolen. For the first time, I was a man groping in a labyrinth,

time i found myself unable to work unable to share our household life with philida and veer or to find relaxation in driving about the countryside anger against desire herself stirred at the bottom of my mind desire who hampered me by the word of honor in which she had netted me so securely it was then that my enemy from the unknown places began to whisper of the book. I encountered that enemy in a new mood. We did not meet at the breach of the mighty wall, confronted in death conflict between its will and mine. Instead, night after night, it crept to my window as at our first meeting. I started awake to find its awful presence blackening the starlight where it crouched opposite me, its intelligence breathing against mine. As always, my human organism shrank from its unhuman neighborhood. Chill and repugnance shook my body,

while that part of me which was not body battled against nightmare paralysis of horror. But now it did not menace or strive against me. It displayed a dreadful suavity I might likened to the coiling and uncoiling of those great snakes who are reported to mesmerize their prey by looping movements and figures melting from change to change in the hunger dance of Ka. There was a book that held all I long to know, it whispered to me.

A book telling of the woman. She did not wish me to read, for fear I should grow overwise and make her mine. The book was here in my house. I might arise and find, if I would be guided by it. I thrust the whispers away. How could I trust my enemy?

If such a book existed, which seemed improbable, there was a taint of disloyalty to desire in the thought of reading without her knowledge. The thing was not turned away. How could I do harm by learning what she was, unless she had evil to conceal? did i fear to know the truth as for the book's existence i had only to accept guidance from it i persisted in refusal but the idea of the book followed me through my days like a wizard's familiar dogging me where could such a volume be hidden in what secret nook in wall or floor how came a book to be written about the girl i supposed young unknown and set apart from the world

was i letting slip an opportunity by my fastidious notions of delicacy indecision and curiosity tormented me beyond rest philida and veer began to consider me with puzzled eyes Christina developed a habit of cooking individual dishes of a special succulent and triumphantly setting them before me as a surprise, a kindness which of course obliged me to eat, whether I was hungry or not. I suspect my little cousin abetted her in this transparent ruse. I pleaded the heat as an excuse for all. We were in late August now. cicadas sang their dry chant in the field where the sun glared down upon veers crops and painted him the fine bronze of an indian our lake scarcely stirred under the hot still air it was after a day of such heat succeeded by a night hardly more cool that the lights in my room quietly went out i was sitting at my table some letters which required

answers spread before me while I brooded, pen between my fingers, upon the mystery which had become my life. For the moment, I attributed the sudden failure of light to some accident at the powerhouse. Not for long. The hateful cold that crept like freezing vapor into the room, the foul air of damp and corruption pouring into the scented country atmosphere, the frantic revolt of body and nerves. Before I turned my eyes to the window, I knew the monster from the frontier crouched there. Weakling, it taunted me. Puney from of old, how should you prevail? By your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand the weapon was laid, and whose shrinking, Let it fall unused, the end comes.

The book, I gasped against my better judgment. The book was the weapon. No, or you would have not offered it to me. Coward, believe so. Hug the belief while you may. The offer is past. Past? A madness of the bafflement and

frustrated curiosity gripped and shook me. I take the offer, I cried in passion and defiance. If there is such a book, show it to me. The thing was gone. Light quietly filled the lamps. Or was it that I had opened my eyes? I gripped the arms of my chair, waiting. For what?

I did not know. only all the horror i ever had felt in the presence of the thing was slight compared to the fear that presently began to flow upon me as an icy current there in the pleasantly lighted room alone i sank through depths of dread down into an abyss of despair down a long sigh of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath of triumph windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with a rattling crash then hung still with unnatural abruptness absolute stillness succeeded i felt a very light shock as if the ground at my feet was struck i fled from the terror for the first time yes coward at last deserter from that unlawed that unseen frontier's defense, I found myself in the hall outside my room, leaning sick and faint against the wall. Behind me, the door shut violently, yet I felt no current of air to move it. From the other side of the house there sounded the click of latch, then a patter of soft-shod

feet. Philida came hurrying down the hall toward me. she was wrapped in some silky pink flower garment her short hair stood out around her head like a little girl's well-brushed crop she presented as endearingly natural a figure i thought as any man could seek or imagine the wisdom of ethan veer who had garnered his love there cousin she exclaimed the hall light is so dim you almost frightened me when I glimpsed you standing there. Did the wind wake you, too? I think we're going to have a thunderstorm. It is so hot and gusty. I heard poor Bagheera mewing and scratching at the door, so I was just going down to let him in before the rain comes. Yes, I achieved, then, finding my voice secure. I will let in the cat. Where is veer? He did not wake up, so I tiptoed out. Why?

I do not like to have you going about the house alone at this hour. Her eyes widened, and she laughed outright. Why, Cousin Roger, what a funny idea to have about our very own house. I have one of the electric flashlights you bought for us all, see? What could I tell her of my vision of her womanly son? softness and timidity brought to bay by the thing of horror down in those empty lower rooms. How did I know it stocked no prey but me? Its clutch was upon Desire Mitchell.

These were its hours, between midnight and dawn. Tramps, I explained evasively. Give me the light. But she pattered down the stairs beside me, kimono lifted well above her pink-flowered slippers one hand on the balustrade the light glinted in the white topaz that guarded her wedding ring a richer jewel than any diamond in the sight of one who knew the tender thought with which she had set it there no the horror was not for her clothed in her wholesome goodness as in armor of proof surely for such as she the barrier stood unbreached and strong when i opened the front door bagheera darted in like a hunted cat a drift of mist entered with him looking out i saw the night was heavy with the low-hanging fog that scarcely rose to the tree a ground mist that eddied in smoke-like waves of gray where our light fell upon it.

Such mists were common here, yet I shivered and shut it out with relief. While I refastened the lock, Bagheera purred around my ankles, pressing caressingly against me, as if thanking me after the manner of cats. I remembered this was not the first time he had shown this angeles, anxiety and gratitude for shelter. Bagheera does love you, Philida commented, stooping to pat him. Isn't it funny, though, that he never will go into your room?

He is always petting around you downstairs. When Christina or I are doing up your quarters, he will follow us right up to the dorsal, but we can't coax him inside. Perhaps he doesn't like that perfume you always have about. a qualm ran through me recalling the night i had taken the cat there by force and its frantic escape but i snapped the key fast and straightened myself with sharp self-contempt had i fallen so low as to heed the caprices of a pet cat was it not enough that i had fled from my enemy after accepting the knowledge it had striven so long to force upon me for i had that knowledge when i had halted in the passage outside my room in the moment before philida had joined me there had been squarely set before my mental sight the place to seek the book

philida there was a bookcase in this house when it was bought i said i believe it stood in my room before the place was altered a small stand i remember putting my candle on its top the first night i slept here have you seen it some tone in my question seemed to touch her expression with a surprise as she lifted her eyes to mine or perhaps it was the hour i chose for the inquiry oh yes she answered readily i suppose you had noticed it long ago i mean where it stands the quaintest bit a genuine antique and holding the stuffiest collection of old books too i believe they may be valuable out of print early editions if her voice faltered wistfully if father ever forgives me for being happy with ethan and comes to visit us he would love every musty old volume do you think mother and he ever will cousin roger i am sure they will phil feuds and tragic parents are out of date they must adjust themselves gradually when they realize veer is himself before you go upstairs to him will you tell me where to find that bookcase now why of course she led me across the hall to her sewing-room i cannot say that she sewed there very much but she had chosen that title in preference to boudoir or study as more becoming a housewife she had assembled here a spinning-wheel from the attic some samplers a hepple-white sewing-table and chairs discovered about the house

her canary's cage hung above a great punch bowl of flowered ware in which she kept goldfish a pipe of veers balanced beside the bowl showed that his masculine presence was not excluded in a corner stood the bookcase philida pulled the chain of a lamp bright under a shade of peacock chint and watched me stoop to look at the faded bindings thank you phil i said it may take some time to find the book i want you'd better hurry back to bed before veer comes hunting for a missing wife are you going to stay and hunt for the book to-night then unless you're afraid i shall disturb your canaries she did not laugh drawing nearer she stroked my sleeve with a caressing doubt and remonstrance but you have not been to bed at all and soon it will be morning do you have to write your lovely music at night cousin roger you have been growing thin and tired this summer are you quite well you're so good that you should be happy but are you good phil i wondered touched why how did your lazy tune-spinning frivolous cousin get that reputation in this branch of the family you are so kind she said simply ethan says so you know cousin roger that i was over-educated in my childhood my brain choked with little little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at all we went to church sundays because that was the correct thing to do but i was almost a heathen when ethan married me he doesn't trouble about church he doesn't trouble about the past or life after death or punishment for sin

he believes if one tries to be kind and straight the big kindness and straightness takes care of everything so i have learned to feel that way too it is a-a-a-a-a-a-a-com sort of feeling all the time if you know what i mean and that is the way you are good although perhaps you never thought of it thank you philida i acknowledged and walked with her to the foot of the stairs when her pink-clad figure had vanished behind her bedroom door i went back to the sewing-room and drew up a chair before the case of books philida had not unreasonably stigmatized them as stuffy they were a sober collection burton's anatomy of melancholy an ancient copy of the apocrypha and a three-volume life of martin luther loaded the first shelf i looked at the second shelf and found it filled with the bound sermons of a divine of whom i had never heard the lowest shelf held strange companions for the sedate volumes above erudite works on theosophy magic the interpretation of dreams and demonology huddled together here not all of them were readable by my humble store of learning there was a latin copy of artemadoras mesmer's shepherd matthew paris some volumes in greek and some of some I judged to be Arabian and Hebrew.

At the end of the row stood a thin, dingy book whose title had passed out of legibility. I took it out and opened the covers. Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the portrait of a woman. Beneath, in old long S-type, dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the legend,

Desire Mitchell, ye five. How a witch? Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward. I was resolved that panic should not drive me again, nor my defense fall from within its walls. Master of my enemy, I might never be. Master of my own inner kingdom, I must and should be. But I was glad to be here instead of upstairs while I read.

glad of the interlude in philida's company and of the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked down at the disturbing lamp the date stamped into the back of the book in roman numerals was of a year in the seventeen hundred what connection could its desire mitchell have with the girl i knew perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify me or at most she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman branded witch by a bigoted generation. Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff portrait. The face was young, delicate of line, with long eyes set wide apart, eyes that even in this wretched picture kept a curious, drowsy watchfulness. The inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but crowsy, Curls clustered about the brow, and two massive braids descended over either shoulder. The perfumed, bronze-colored braid up in my drawer?

The volume was entitled, Some Manifestations of Satan in Witchcraft in Ye Colonies, by Abimelech Featherstone. Disregarding the satanic manifestations set forth in the other four chronicles, I turned to Yewerectalach, ye foul witch desire mitchell as i began to read another breath of wind sighed through the house sucking windows and doors in and out with the shock of sound instantly ended that is produced by a distant explosion i thought a flash of lightning whipped across my eyes but when i glanced toward the windows i saw only the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the pane End of Chapter 13. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 14 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram. Chapter 14. Beauty is a witch. Much ado about nothing. I will tear the world. core out of many yellow pages of diffuse writing spiced with smug moral reflections. Desire Mitchell had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent,

no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of black men and sabbets, and harm done to neighbor's cattle or crops. Her father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter from England to the colonies and settled in ye-pequat marsh country there he found a congregation and they lived much respected their culture appeared to be far beyond that of their few hard-working neighbors young mistress mitchell was reputed learned in the use of simples among other arts and to have been of a beauty exceeding the custom among godly women to so great degree that sorcery should have been suspected of her. However, sorcery was not suspected, not even when her fame spread among near-dwelling Indian tribes,

who gave her a name signifying, water on which the sun is shining. Adoration was her portion, then, with all the suitors the vicinity held. But from fastidiousness or ambition, she refused every proposal made to her father for, her she walked aloof and alone until another sort of wooer came to the gate of the minister's house this man's full name was not given apparently through the writer's cautious respect for place and influence he was vaguely described as goodly in appearance of high family but not abundantly supplied with riches however he chanced to come to the obscure settlement

was not stated. He did come, saw Desire Mitchell, and fell as objectively prostrate before her as any youth who never had left the village. He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At first he was welcome at the minister's house, but a day came when Master Mitchell forbade him to cross that door, and rumor whispered, scandalized, that Sir Austin's suit had not been honorable to the maid. Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the torment of not seeing Desire Mitchell. Their betrothal was made public, and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage

in the spring. Travel was slow in the winter. News trickled slowly across snowbound distances. With spring came no bridegroom. Instead, word arrived of his affair with an heiress recently come to New York from England. She was rich in gold and grants of land from the crown. Her husband would be a man of weight and influence, it seemed. Sir Austin had married her.

Desire Mitchell shut herself in her father's house. The clergyman did not live many months after the humiliation, alone. the girl lived student wrote abimelech featherstone of black and bitter art or as some say having like bombastus de hohenheim a devil's bird enchained to do her will in his distant home sir austin sickened he burned with fever anguish consumed him physicians were called to the bedside of the rich man they could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He screamed for water. When it was brought, his throat locked and he could not swallow. He raved of Desire Mitchell, beseeching her mercy. In his times of sanity, he begged and commanded his wife and servants to send for the girl. In her pardon, he saw his sole hope of life. Finally he was obeyed. Messengers were

were sent to the village. They were not even admitted to the house they sought, or to sight of Mistress Mitchell. Your master came himself to Wu. Let him come himself to plead. That was the answer they received to carry back to the sick man. Sir Austin heard and submitted with trembling hope. Rithing in the anguish wasting him by day and night, he made the journey by coach and litter. to desire Mitchell's house. At her door-sill he implored entrance and pity. The door did not open. It never opened for him.

For three days in succession he was born to her threshold, calling on her in his pain and fear. His servants and physician clustered about, staring at the house which stood locked and blank of response. At night, fire-shine, was seen from an upper room some declared they heard wild melodious laughter on the third day sir austin died a stern-faced deputation of men went to the house of the late clergyman they found the door unlatched and opened to their entrance in the upper room they found mistress mitchell seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers her hair flowing down in great beauty what have I to do with Sir Austin or he with me she calmly asked the men who

gaped upon her how should I have harmed him who came not near him as ye know bury him and leave me in peace if she had been aged and ugly she might have been hung gossip ran rife through the countryside but indignation was strong against the man who had jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm done, and the matter slept for a time. New matters came. A horror grew up around the house. The girl was seen flitting across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her voice was heard from the room where she locked herself alone, raised in unknown speech. Strange lights moved in her window. in the deep night the old woman who had served in the house for years was stricken with a palsy and was taken away mumbling unintelligible things that iced the blood of superstitious hearers

there was a young man of the neighborhood whose love for mistress mitchell had been long and constant one morning he was found dead on her doorstep his face fixed in drawn terror under his hand four words were scrawled in the snow sarah daughter of rule there were those who could finish that quotation next sabbath the new minister took as his text ye shall not suffer a witch to live and he spoke of sarah the daughter of rule who was wed to ten bridegrooms each of whom was dead on the wedding eve for she was beloved by an evil spirit that suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at last against Desire Mitchell, but when the officers came to arrest her, she was found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth. Fair and upright in her place,

scented with a perfume she herself distilled of her learning in such matters, which was said to contain a rare herb of Jerusalem called Ladies' Rose, resembling Spikenard, with vervain and cedar and secret simple, in which she steeped her hair so that wherever she abode were sweet odors. So did she escape justice, but shall not escape hell's damnation and heavens casting out. I closed the book and laid it down. reading those dim, closely printed pages had taken time.

I was astonished to find the window spaces gray with dawn when I glanced that way. The night was past. Neither from desire nor from the thing without a name which had sent me to this book, could I find out what I was expected to glean from the narration. My enemy had made no conditions on directing me to the book, It had asked no price, uttered no menace. Why, then, had I so solemn a certainty that a crisis in our affair had been reached? I had come to an end, a corner had been turned, I had opened a door that could not be closed.

How did I know this? Why? Why was the fog against the windows this morning so like the fog that shrews, shrouded the unearthly sea opposite the barrier. By and by, Christina came downstairs and busied herself in the kitchen. Bagheera, who had slept beside my chair all night, rose and padded out to the region of breakfast and saucers of milk. Next, the voices of Philida and Veer drifted from above. To have Philida find me there in her sewing room, finishing.

an all-night vigil invoked too many explanations. I did an unwise thing. From the lowest shelf of the bookcase, I gathered such books as were readable by my knowledge, and carried the armful up to my room. After a hut bath and breakfast, I would look over these companions of the New England Witch Book. End of Chapter 14.

Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 15 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram. Chapter 15. Not a drop of her blood was human,

but she was made like a soft, sweet woman. Lilith. The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of a solid mass enclosing the house no wind stirred it no cheering beam of sun pierced it through it sounds reached the ear distorted and magnified all day i sat in my room reading there are books which should not be preserved i who am a lover of books who detest any form of censorship i do seriously set down my book belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With this, few people will

agree. My answer to them is simple. They have not read the books I mean. Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of course. Nearly all of them were well known to classical students, at least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were, but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their titles. Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it.

Dinner with Philida and Veer was an ordeal hurried through. We were out of touch. I felt remote from them, fenced apart by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt for my companion's childish light-heartedness. As soon as possible I left them. Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed aside the pile of books and sank into somber thought. What should I say to Desire Mitchell, if she came to-night? Who was she? Who was she?

who was claimed by the unspeakable and who did not deny its claim. Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man with full measure of mankind's common faults and weaknesses, could hold its clutch from me by right of the law that protect. texts each in his place was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places sarah the daughter of rule who is beloved by an evil spirit who suffered none to come to her there was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty daughter of a nobleman of mar who loved a foul monstrous thing very horrible to behold and for it refused rich marriages

until the gospel of st john being said suddenly the wicked spirit flew his ways with sore noise i put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct sight but i could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these books had implanted i could not forget that desire mitchell herself had alleged jealousy as the thing's reason for attacking me what if we came to an explanation to-night and ended this long delirium was it not time had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right resolution mounted in me defiant and strong the evening had passed to an hour when i might look for the girl to come i switched off the lights and sat down to keep our nightly trist in the darkness of the haunted room the thoughts i would have held at bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers desire desire of the world desire of mine and of the unhuman thing did we grasp at eve or lilith at the fire on the hearth or the cold phosphorescence of swamp and marsh a drift of fragrance was afloat in the air a delicate stir of movement passed by me i raised my head from my hands expectant i am here her familiar voice told me desire you had to come to-night some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words but she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might she was mute as one who stands still to find the path before taking a step you are angry she said at last

something here has gone badly for you i knew that before i entered this room how can you say that i challenged if you are like other men and women how can you know what happens when you are absent how do you know what passes between the thing from the frontier and me i do not know unless you tell me roger if i feel from afar when you are in sorrow why do so many people feel with another in sympathy you feel more than ordinary sympathy can i retorted then perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy i have for you roger her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood was she trying to turn me from my purpose with her soft speech she had never granted me anything so near an admission of love until now it is not an ordinary trial that i have borne for these meager meetings where i do not see your face or touch your hand i answered but that must end put your hand in mind desire and come with me let us go out of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly you shall stay with my cousin or if you choose we will go straight to new york or boston i am asking you to be my wife let us have done with phantoms and spectres i love you no she whispered You do not love me tonight.

Tonight you distrust me. Why? Is it distrusting to ask you to marry me? Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came, but I will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the heart. But it is not for me.

Have you forgot? rhodden roger that my life is not mine that i am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while the gates soon close now upon me what gates i demanded sacrifice and expiation expiation of what i exclaimed exasperated desire i have read the book of desire mitchell downstairs i heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness silence bound us both in the hush it seemed to me that the house suddenly trembled as it had done the night before a slight shock as from some distant explosion my intentness upon the woman opposite me, the tremor passed unheeded. She must answer me now, surely. Now! She spoke with a breathless difficulty, spacing her words apart.

How did you find the book? It told me, the thing from out there, I admitted, sullenly defiant of her opinion. She cried out sharply. You? You took its gift? You did that fatal madness, and you are here? Oh, you are lost and the guilt mine. Yet I warned you that danger flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk and the sorrow. Yet you have thrown down all for a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it means to take a gift from the dark ones of the borderland, to brave the loathsome eyes so long and fall this way at last. Yet there may be a hope, since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but go now. By all that man can dread for solar body, go now. Not without you. Me. Me. Oh, how can I make you understand?

I shall never come here again. Take with you my gratitude for our hours together, my prayers for all the years to come. There is no blame to you because you could not trust a woman on whom falls the shadow of the awful watcher that stalks behind me. I make no reproach, if only you will go. Do not linger. I do most solemnly warn you not to stay alone in this room one moment after I have gone.

Desire, I exclaimed. Wait, forgive me. I trust you. I did not mean what you believe. Do not leave me this way. Desire! I can say honestly that my next action was without intention. On my table lay as usual.

a small electric torch. Every member of our household was provided with one for use in emergencies, likely to occur in a country house, the time of candles being passed. Now, rising in agitation and repentance, my hand pressed by chance upon the flashlight's button. A beam of light poured across the darkness. What did I see, starting out of the black gloom? A spirit or a woman?

Were those a woman's draperies Or part of the night fog That showed mere swirl upon swirl Of pale grey Twisting in the path of light? I glimpsed a face Colorless as pearl The shine of eyes dark and almond-shaped

Then a drifting mass of grey smoke All intermingled with glittering gold flashes seemed to close between us. The whole apparition sank down out of vision. As aghast, I lifted my hand, and the torch went out. Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my place. Did I hear a movement, or only a stirring of the orchard trees beyond the windows? Desire? I ventured, my voice hoarse to my ears.

No answer. I felt myself alone. I would not at once turn on the lamps. My haste might seem an attempt to break faith with her a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms upon the table and resting my forehead upon them. Well, I had seen her at last, but how? A wan loveliness seemingly painted upon the canvas of the dais of the dais. dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A white moth caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at the instant of her leaving me forever, insulted by my suspicions, my love hurled

coarsely at her like a command, my promise of security for her visits apparently broken. How dared I even hope for her return? Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to those books that I might read, fill my mind with the poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the comradeship that bound me to desire Mitchell. How should I find her? How free us both? The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single bell. With dull surprise, I realized that considerable time. had passed while I sat there. Still, I did not move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.

Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in advance of the incoming tide, impelled by some deep stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge rushed about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck through my whole body. My heart shuddered and still. staggered in its beating from pure shock. Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now! The wave seeped back, receded away from me down its invisible beach. Desire's warning hammered at my mind, striving to burst some barred door to reach the consciousness within

that had loitered too long. This was the new peril. this was what i had fled from unknowing the source of my panic the night before this was death a second surge struck me with the heavy shock of a veritable wave from some bitter ocean this time the tide rose to my knees boiling and hissing in its rush blood and nerves seemed to freeze i felt my heart stop then reel on like a broken thing flecks of crimson spattered like foam against my eyelids the wave broke the mass poured down the beach tugging at me in its retreat with the last strength ebbing away from me with that receding current i dragged the chain of the lamp beside me the comfort of light springing up in the room the relief of seeing normal pleasant surroundings truly light is an elixir of courage to man that cold had paralyzed me i had no force to rise nor did i altogether wish to rise and go i had lost desire to-night was i to lose my self-respect also was i to run a beaten man from this peril after standing

against my enemy so long? Should I not rather stand on this, my ground, where I was not the lame feller? Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds

indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam. the series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued on dying away down the creek as i braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise the light was withdrawn from every lamp in the room at the same moment the electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor i heard its progress across the muffling softness of the rug across the polished wood beyond and final stoppage at some point out of my reach as vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing mass within the curdled air so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared itself in the night and stared in upon me as so many times i felt the eyes i could not see the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me poised to crush yet withheld by a force greater than either of us the venom of its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me fouling the breath i drew

my lungs labored pig me its intelligence thrust against mine frail and presumptuous will that has dared oppose mine you are conquered this is the hour foretold to you the hour of your weakness and my strength weakling feel the death-surf break upon you fall down before me cower plead now indeed i felt a sickness of self-doubt for the wash of the invisible sea never had come to me until to-night and there was desires saying that i had destroyed myself by accepting the thing's gift of knowledge of the book but i summoned my forces never my thought refused it have we not met front to front these many knights and who has drawn back breaker of the law you return but i live the duel is not lost it is lost man and to me have you not taken my gift that you might spy meanly on the secret of your beloved have you not opened your mind to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and tear down its power of your own deed you are mine my breath drinks your breath your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its pedestal your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those spaces where it shall take flight

to-night. Man, you die. Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining low. My enemy spoke the truth. one more such wave my imagination sprang ahead of the event in fancy i saw bright dawn filling this room of mine shining on the figure of a man who had been myself his head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden on the table beside him a vase was overturned a spray of heliotrope lay near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music staining the paper by and by veer would come to summon that unanswering figure to the gay little breakfast table philida would leave her place behind the burnished copper percolon later she prized so highly, and come running up the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry for that, but it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall

that I had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange how she had been rated below, more beautiful or more clever women, until the waif Ethan Veer had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at. Pigmy! Will you think of another pigmy now? Raged the thing. Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. think how you are alone with me think how you are abandoned to me but with that tenderness for philida a warmth had flowed through me like strength not so my defiance answered it for where i am i stand by my own will with where i shall stand you have nothing to do

back then for with the death of my body your power ends back or else face me thing of darkness while we stand in one place at this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness i stood before the barrier on the ghostly frontier erect arms folded fronting the breach in that inconceivably mighty wall above a way out of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs this i had seen before but by behind me lay that which i had not seen the mists i believed to be eternal had lifted naked a vast gray sea stretched parallel with the barrier like it without end or even a horizon to bound its enormous desolation between these two immensities on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall i stood pigmy indeed in the breach as of old the thing whose home was there reared itself against me man it spat would you see me would you see the eyes once seen by the witch-woman who fell blasted out of human ken creature of clay crumbling now in the sea of mortality do you brave my immemorial age it reared up up a towering formlessness it stooped a lowering menace man man whenever man has summoned evils since the youngest days of the world have i not answered have i not brought my presence to the magician's lamp

have i not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible when the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge did i not come i am the guardian of the barrier whoever would pass this way must pass me have you the power die then and be gone with a long heaving sound of waters in movement the gray sea stirred from its stillness as if drawn to some center out of sight the tide began to recede down that strange beach then realization came to me that here was the ocean which invisible had surged icy death upon me a while past the ocean now gathered for the final way that should overwhelm the defeated. "'Braggart,' my thought answered the taunt. "'If the witch-woman was yours, the girl desire is mine.

This I know. As little as man has to do with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare to look a woman. upon you, if you have visible form. Now in the hush, a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps, hurrying, hurrying,

the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft and the great wall. For there, there, I was, and in the cold darkness was writhing and turning visible yet obscure as the rapids of a glassy twisting river might look by night and as one might glimpse beneath the smooth boil and heave of such a river the dim shape of crocodile or water monster so in that moving dark there seemed to lie something from which the mind shrank appalled now gigantic tentacles rolled about a central mass groping out in unsatisfied greed now an ape-like shape seemed to stock there rearing up its monstrous stature until all that breach was choked with it it fell down into vagueness where huge coils upraised and sank their loops but through all change steadily fixed upon me i felt down into vagueness where huge coils upraised and sank their loops but through all change steadily fixed upon me i felt felt the eyes of the unseen. I stood my ground.

With what pain and draining cost to my poor endurance, there is no need to say. Each instant I anticipated the surge of that returning sea whose flood should smother out the human spark upon its shore. This I had brought upon myself. Yes, and would again to help desire Mitchell. If I had sheltered her for one hour, The thing halted, stooped.

Man, cast off the woman, it snarled at me. Fool, evil goes with her. For her you suffer. Thrust her from your breast. I looked down, wavering against my breast, just above my heart, glimmered a spot of light. the little hurrying steps had ceased i thought if the bright head of desire mitchell were rested there against me how i would strive to shield her from sight of the thing yonder in the sweep of that will to protect i drew my coat about the spot of hovering brightness i felt her press warm against me i heard the roar of the death wave far out in that sea

before me oh horror of the frontier what broke through the dread breach what formed there more inhuman from its likeness to humanity what hand reached for me for us end of chapter fifteen recording by roger maline chapter sixteen of the thing from the lake this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter sixteen i have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was midsummer night's dream mr locke mr lock i opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of ethan veer who bent over me philida was there too pale of face but what was that just vanishing into the darkness beyond my window-sill what malignant glare seared disappointment and grim promise across my consciousness had i brought with me or did i hear now a whispered pigmy again cousin cousin are you very ill philida was half sobbing won't you drink the brandy please oh ethan how cold he is to touch hush dear veer bade in a slow steadfast way mr locke can you swallow some of this i became aware that his arm supported me upright in my chair while he held a glass to my lips mechanically i drank some of the cordial

veer put down the glass and said a curious thing he asked me shall i get you out of this room why should he ask that since the spectre was for me alone or if he had not seen it how did he know this room was an unsafe area my stupefied brain puzzled over these questions while i managed a sign of refusal any effort was impossible to me the cold of the unearthly sea still numbed my body my heart labored staggering at each beat veer's support and nearness were welcome to me his tact let me rest in the mute inaction necessary to recovery while my body astonished that it still lived hesitatingly resumed the task of life somehow he reassured and directed philida presently she was busied with the coffee apparatus in the corner of the room it was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of the table before me the vase was upset i noted as i had seemed to see it the spray of purple heliotrope philida had put there the day before lay among the wet sheets of music the book of hermes lay open at the page i had last turned the rose lamplight upon the text. Behold, I saw a great beast

that he might devour a city whose name is Hegrin. Thou hast escaped, because thou didst not fear for so terrible a beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may escape. What did they mean,

the old, old words men have rejected? What had Hermes glimpsed in his vision? how many men are written down liars because they traveled in strange lands indeed and explorers strove to report what they had seen who before me had stood at the barrier and set foot on the frontier between the world the fog still dense outside was whitening with daybreak a few hours while the sun ran its course once more for me then night again bringing completion of the man menace i recognized that this delay could not affect the end perhaps it would have been easier if all had finished for me to-night easier if veer and philida had not found me in time to bring me back how had they found out my condition wonder stirred under my lethargy had i called or cried out it did not seem that i could have done so certainly i had not tried i was not quite so poor an adventurer as that philida was back with a cup of steaming black coffee tiptoeing in her anxiety and questioning veer with her eyes he took the cup stooping to receive my glance of assent to the new medicine the brandy had stimulated but sickened me the coffee revived me so much that i was able to take the second cup without

fear's help. When I had walked up and down the room a few times, leaning on his arm, life had taken me back, if only for a little while. The two nurses were so good in their care of me that our first words were of my gratitude to them. Then my curiosity found voice. How did you happen to come in at this hour? I asked. How did you know I was ill? I cannot imagine what made Ethan wake up, said Philida, with a puzzled look toward her husband. He woke me by rushing out of the room and letting the door slam behind him. Of course, I knew something must be wrong to make drawls hurry like that. Usually he does such a tremendous lot in a day while looking positively lazy.

So I came rushing after and found him in here, trying to waken you. I thought at first that you were not living, cousin Roger. It was horrible. You were all white and cold, she shivered. Veer poured another cup of coffee. He said nothing on the subject, merely observing that the stimulant would hardly hurt me, and some might be good for Phil. I asked her to bring cups for them both.

I am not sure I really care about the coffee, but I'll make some more, she nodded, dimpling. I love to drink from your wee porcelain cups with their gold holders. You do have pretty things, you bachelors from town. When she was across the room, I asked quietly, What was it, Veer? What sent you to me? He answered in as subdued a tone, looking at the tinted shade of the lamp instead of at my face.

The young lady woke me, Mr. Locke. She came to the bedside, whispering that you were dying. Would be dead if I didn't get to help you in time. She was gone before Philida roused up, so she doesn't know anything about it. My heart, so nearly stopped forever and so lethargic still, leaped in a strong beat. Desire, then, had come back to save me.

For all my dear, doubt and seemingly broken faith, she had brought her slight power to help me in my hour of danger. For my sake she had broken through her mysterious seclusion to call Veer and send him to my rescue. Neither he nor I being unsophisticated, I understood what Veer believed and why he looked at the lamp rather than at me. But even that matter had to yield precedence to my first eagerness. You saw her, I demanded. You call her young. You saw her face, then?

I could forget it if I had, he said dryly. As it happened, I didn't. She was wrapped in a lot of floating thin stuff, gray, I guess. The room was pretty dark, and I was jumping out of sleep. I don't know why she seemed young, unless it was the easy, light way she moved. By the time I got what she was saying and sat up, she was gone. Gone? She went out the door like a puff of smoke. I just saw a gray figure in the doorway, where the hall lamp made it brighter than in the room. When I came into the hall, there wasn't a sign of anybody

about, nor afterward either. I considered briefly. I supposed to be a little. I suppose, I I know what you're thinking, Veer. It is natural, but wrong. The lady— Mr. Locke, he checked me. I'm not, thinking. I guess you're as good a judge as I am about what goes on in this house. After the way you've treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know you're as choice of Philida as I am, and she is all that matters. "'Who is?' demanded Philida, returning. "'Me? I haven't the least idea what you're talking about, drawls. But I think Cousin Roger matters a great deal more than I do, just now.

Perhaps now he is able to tell us about this attack, and if he should have a doctor. I have noticed for weeks how thin and grave he has been growing to be. If only he would drink buttermilk. i looked into the candid affectionate face she turned to me from her i looked to her husband whose new england steadiness had been tempered by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the test of his experience in a city cabaret a new thought cleaved through my perplexities like an arrow shot from a far-off place how much do you both trust me i slowly asked I do not mean trust my character or my good intentions, but how much confidence have you in my sanity and common sense? Would you believe a thing because I told it to you?

Or would you say, This is outside usual experience. He is deceiving us or mad. They regarded one another, smiling with an exquisite intimacy of understanding. Don't you see yourself one night? little, little bit, cousin, she wondered at me. Anything you say goes all the way with us, Veer corroborated. Wait, I bade.

Drink your coffee while I think. Please drink yours, cousin Roger, all fresh and hot. I emptied the cup, she urged upon me, then leaned my forehead in my hands, and tried to review the situation. They obeyed like well-bred children, settling down on a cushioned seat together and taking their coffee as prettily as a pair of parakeets. They seemed almost children to me, although there was little difference in years between Veer and myself.

But then I stood in the brink where years stopped. With the next night, my triumphant enemy could be put off no longer, That I could not doubt. I cannot say that I was unafraid, yet fear weighed less upon me than a heavy sense of solemnity and realization of the few hours left during which I could affect the affairs of life. What remained to be done? On one of my visits to New York, I had called on my lawyer and made my will. There were a few pensioners for whom provision should continue after my death.

the aged music-master under whom i developed such abilities as i had who was crippled now by rheumatism and otherwise dependent on a hard-faced son-in-law the three small daughters of a dead friend an actor whose care and education at a famous school of classic dancing i had promised him to finance a few such obligations had been provided for and the rest was for philida but now what of desire mitchell she had seemed so apart from common existence that i never had thought of her possible needs any more than of the needs of a bird that darted in and out of my windows until to-night when i had seen her and she had proved herself all woman by her appeal to ethan veer it was not a spirit or a cirrus or ye foul witch desire Mitchell, who had fled to him for help in rescuing me. It was simply a terrified girl. What was to become of this girl? Under what circumstances did she dwell?

Had she a home, or did she need one? Could I care for this matter while I was here? Day was so far advanced that a clamor of birds came into us along with a freshening air. The strangely persistent fog had not lifted, but the lamps already looked wan and faded in the new light. I switched them out before speaking to the pair who watched me. I have a story to tell you both, I said. The beginning of it, Philida has already heard. Perhaps.

Have you told Veer about the woman who visited this room the first night I spent in the house? who cut her hair and left the braid in my hand to escape from me. Yes, she nodded, wide-eyed. Will you go to my chiffonier there in the alcove and bring a package wrapped in a white silk from the top drawer? She did as she was asked, and laid the square of folded silk before me. I put back the covering, showing that sumptuous braid.

the rich fragrance of the gold pommender wrapped with it filled the air like a vivifying elixir philida gathered up the braid with a cry of envious rapture oh the gorgeous thing how do some lucky girls have hair like that if it was unbound my two hands could not hold it all what a pity to have cut it look ethan how it crinkles and glitters she held it out to him extended across her palms veer refrained from touching the braid surveying it where it lay being a mere bachelor i had no idea of philleter's emotions until veer's usual gravity broke in a mischievous heartwarming smile into the brown eyes uplifted to him beautiful he agreed politely no more but as i saw the wistful envy pass quite away from my little cousin's plain face and leave her content i advanced in respect for him in the beginning it was even harder to speak than i had anticipated when philada laid the braid back in its wrapping i left it uncovered before me and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my listeners how i wondered could anyone be expected to credit the story i had to tell how should i find words to embody it only at first whether there clung about me some atmosphere of that land between the worlds where i so recently had stood or the room indeed kept as i fancied the melancholy chill of the unseen tide that had washed through it

i met no scepticism from the two who heard my tale of wild experience they did not interrupt me philida crept close to her husband putting her hand in his but she did not exclaim or question. Silence held us all for a while after I had finished. I had a discouraged sense of inadequacy. After all, they had received but a meager outline. The color and body of the events escaped speech. How could they feel what I had felt? How could they conceive the charm of Desire Mitchell, the white magic of her voice in the dark, the force of her personality that could impress her image, sight unseen, beyond all time, to erase. How convey to a listener that, understanding her so little, I yet knew her so well? I have told you all this because I need your help, I said presently.

Will you give it to me? Go away, Philida burst forth. She beat her palms together in her earnestness. Cousin'Rogher, Take your car and go away, far off. Go where nothing can reach you. You must not spend another single night here. Ethan will go with you.

I will too, if you want us. You must not be left alone until you are quite safe. Perhaps in New York? And, Desire Mitchell? She is in no danger, I suppose. she is not my cousin anyhow, and even she told you to go away. You believe my story, then? You do not think me suffering from delusions? Ethan saw the girl, too. If he had not come here in time to save you,

I believe you would have died in that terrible stupor. Besides, I have seen for weeks that something was changing you. What does Veer say? I questioned, studying the absorbed gravity of his expression. I wondered what I myself would have said if anyone had brought me such a story. He passed his arm around Philida, and drew her to him with a quieting, protective movement. His regard met mine with more significance than he chose to voice. I am satisfied to take the thing as you tell it, Mr. Locke, he answered.

phil is right it seems to me about you not staying here i don't think the young lady ought to stay either she refuses to leave veer what can i offer her that i have not offered how can i find her you have heard how i searched the countryside for a hint of such a girl's presence no one has ever seen her or else someone lies very cleverly in the pause philida hesitatingly ventured an idea perhaps she is not real if the monster is a ghost thing may not she be one too if we are to believe in such things at all she almost seems to intend that you shall believe her the ghost of the witch-girl in that old book i shook my head with the helpless feeling of trying to explain some abstruse knowledge to a child. I had spoken of the colossal spaces, the solemn immensities of the place where I had set my human foot. I had tried to paint the desolate bleakness of that borderland where the unnamed thing and I met, each beyond his own law-decred boundary, and locked in combat, bitter and strong. Philida had listened and talked of ghosts, the bugbears of graveyard

superstition. Did Veer comprehend me better? Did he visualize the struggle, weirdly akin to legends of night and dragon, as prize of which waited Desire Mitchell, forlornly helpless as white Andromeda chained to her black cliff? Could the main countryman, the cabaret entertainer, seize the truths glimped by Rosicrucians and mystics of lost cults, when the highly bred college girl failed it seemed so at least his dark eyes met mine with intelligence hers held only bewilderment and fear they are not ghosts i said only

but how can you be sure she persisted beneath the braid and the pommender lay the sheet of paper on which desire had written weeks before the first page of that composition now pouring gold into my hands this i pass to philida do ghosts write i queried she read the lines aloud we walk upon the shadows of hills across a level throne and pant like climbers they do write people say with whee-ge boards and mediums she do write people say with whee-boards and mediums she murmured. I looked at Veer with despair of sustaining this argument. He stood up as if my appeal had been spoken, drawing her with him. Now that it's a decent hour, don't you think Christina might give us some breakfast, he suggested? I guess bacon and eggs would be sort of restoring.

If you feel up to take in my arm as far as the porch, Mr. Locke, the fresh air might be good medicine too i have speculated sometimes upon how civilized man would get through days not spaced by his recurrent meals into three divisions those meals are hyphens between his mind and his body as it were what sense of humor can view too intensely a creature who must feed himself three times a day are we not pleasantly urged out of our heroics and into the normal by breakfast luncheon and dinner deny it as we will when we do not heed them we are out of touch with nature we went downstairs after breakfast was over veer and i walked across the orchard to a seat placed near the lake there i sat down while he remained standing in his favorite attitude, one foot on a low boulder, his arm resting on his knee as he gazed into the shallow, amber-tinted water. Fog still overlay the countryside, but without bringing coolness. The damp heat was stifling, almost tropical as the sun mounted higher in the hidden sky.

I watched my companion, waiting for him to speak. He appeared intent upon the darting movements of a group of tiny fish. But I knew his thoughts were afar. Mr. Locke, I didn't want to speak before Philida, because it would not do any good for her to hear what I have to say, he finally began. It is properly the answer to what you asked upstairs, about our believing you had not imagined that story. Did anything slip out over the windowsill when you were waking up? Stardled, for I had not spoken of this, I met his gave.

Yes, did you see... Nothing, exactly. Something, though, like... Well, like something pouring itself along, a big, thick mass. Something sort of smooth and glistening, like black, oily molasses slipping over. only alive somehow drawing coils of itself out of the dark into the dark i can't put it very plain what did you think

the air in the room was bad and close hard to breathe i guessed maybe i was a little dizzy jumping out of bed the way i did and finding you like dead almost he paused and returned his contemplation to the fish darting in the lake. "'That is what I thought,' he concluded. "'What I felt—well, it was the kind of scare I didn't used to know you could feel outside of bad dreams. "'The kind you wake up from all shaking, "'with your face and hands dripping sweat. "'That isn't all, either.

"'This time the pause was so long "'that I thought he did not mean to continue. my excuse for speaking of such matters before philida is that i may need a woman friend for desire mitchell i reverted to the implied rebuke i acknowledged his right to give i wanted her help and yours more than ever since you have shared my experience so far i want your advice i'll be proud to give it in a minute first it's only fair to say i've felt enough wrong around here to be able to understand a lot that once i might have laughed at nothing compared to you but i've been working about the lake sometimes after dark or or before daylight was strong, when a kind of horror would come over me, well, I'd feel I had to get away and into the house or go crazy. That morning when you called from your window to ask where I'd been so early,

and I told you looking for turtles, that was one time. I had gone out looking for turtles, but that horror drove me in. When you hailed me, I had had to be, it so bad that I could just about make out not to run for the house like a scared cat, yelling all the way. Turning back to the lake with you was a poser, but I did, and the feeling was all gone as quick as it came. We had a nice morning shooting. Once in a while I've felt it sort of driving me indoors when I stepped off the porch or over to the barn at night. That's a funny thing. The fear was always outside, not in the house.

I thought of that while you were telling us how the thing at the window kept trying to get in at you. We haven't got a haunted house, but a haunted place. Why have you not spoken of this before, I asked, deeply stirred? He made a gesture, too American to be called a shrug. he said nothing watching a large bubble rise through the pure brown-green water float an instant on the surface then vanish with the abrupt completeness of a miniature explosion i watched also with an always fresh interest in the pretty phenomenon then i repeated my question rather impatiently as i considered what a relief his companionship in experience would have afforded all these weeks. Why not, Veer? Mr. Locke, I don't like to keep saying that you never exactly got used to me as your cousin's husband, he reluctantly replied. But I can see it's a kind of surprise to you

right along that I don't break down or break out in some fashion. Of course, I haven't known that you were meeting queer times, too. If you hadn't been through any of this, what would you have thought if i'd come to you with stories of the place being haunted by something nobody could see you would have judged i was a liar trying to fix up an excuse for getting away from the work here and shoving off i don't want to go away i don't intend to go i can't see any need of it for phil and me but-and this is the advice you spoke of-i i think you ought to leave and leave now it's little better than suicide to stay and abandon desire mitchell he turned his dark observant eyes toward me if i said yes you wouldn't do it phil and i will take care of the young lady if she will let us couldn't a note be left for her telling her to come to us I shook my head. She would not come.

Now, less than ever, I broke off, shot with sharp self-reproach at the memory of how I had driven her from me last night. You won't be any help to her if you're dead, he bluntly retorted. At that I rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple tree. I was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden bronze spot of light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the barrier. The light so like the bright imagined head of desire.

To fly from my place now, herded like a cow-ed like a cow-and-lawful. cowardly sheep by the thing of the frontier, would that not be to thrust her away to save myself? No, not myself, my life. I had the answer now. I walked back to Veer and took my seat again. Both of us, or neither, I told him. If you can help me make it both by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. it's a pleasant world but we will not talk any more of my running for new york like a kicked pup the question is will you and philida take care of the lady who calls herself desire mitchell if to-morrow morning finds her free but alone and friendless as long as we live mr locke he answered but i guess there isn't any disgrace in your going to new york running or not

if you take her with you. And that is what ought to have been done long ago. Veer, he nodded. You've got me. Just pick the lady up, carry her out of that room, and have a showdown. Put her in your car and take her to town. I gave her my word not... People can't stand bowing to each other when the ship's a-fire.

If she is worth dying for, she doesn't want you to die for her. The simplicity of it. And, leaping the breach of faith, the temptation. What harm could I do desire by this plan of veers? What good might I not do her? Was it mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule her timid will? She must pardon me when she realized my desperate case. A dying man might be excused for some roughness of haste, surely.

Whether flight could save us, I did not know. I did know, absolutely, that my enemy had crossed the barrier last night, and I was prey merely withheld from it by the chance respite of a few daylight hours. suppose our escape succeeded a whole troop of pictures flitted across the screen of my fancy desire beside me in the city my wife desire in those delightful shops that make fifth avenue gay as a garden of tulips where i might buy for her frocks and hats shoes of conspicuous frivolity and those long white gloves that seem to correct a woman's arm, everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had described for her, where she might dine and silk and ease, and perhaps here played the music she had named. I aroused myself and looked at Veer.

"'You'll do it,' he translated my expression. "'I will, if she gives me the opportunity.' "'Do you judge she will?' i hope so since she went so far as to show herself to you in order to send help to me when i was in danger i believe she will come to my room to-night if i wait there he looked at me silently the consternation and protest in his face were speech enough if i wait there alone i finished somewhat hurriedly if she comes in time we will try the plan have the car ready you and philida will be prepared of course we will waste no time in getting away as far as possible and if that thing comes before she does mr locke is there any other way i guess you haven't considered that you're inviting me to stand by while you get yourself killed he said stiffly i'm not an educated man i never heard the names you mentioned this morning of people who used to study out things like this i never heard of any worlds except earth and heaven and hell but then i couldn't explain how an electric car runs i know the car does

run and I know you nearly died last night. If you go back and stay alone in that room, we both know what you are going to meet. I turned away from him because I sickened at the prospect he evoked. The memory of that death-tide was too near and rolled too coldly across the future. If the trial had been hard when mercifully unanticipated, what would it be to be to be to meet my enemy now that I knew myself conquered. Would it not deliberately forestall desires coming tonight? Mightn't you help the lady more if you went away now and came back, he urged? The deserter's argument, time without end. Was I to fall as low as that? Philida's voice called to veer from the verand, summoning him to some need of farm or

household. In a moment, pretty, he called assent. But he did not move. I guessed that he hoped much for my silence and would not disturb me lest my decision be hindered or changed. By and by, I stood up. Veer, in your varied experiences in peace and war, did you ever chance to meet a coward?

Once, he answered briefly. And, did you like the sight? No. Then, I said, let us not invite one another to that display. Shall we go into Philida? End of Chapter 16, recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 17 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public.

domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram. Chapter 17. They say, what say they? Let them say. Old Scottish inscription. After luncheon, I drove over to the village with Philida, who had some housewively orders to give at the shops. On second thoughts, Veer and I had agreed to tell.

her nothing about the venture we planned for tonight. We had satisfied her by the assurance that I meant to start for New York before the dangerous hours after midnight. Reassured, she regained her usual spirits with the buoyancy of her few years and healthy nerves. I gathered her secret belief that no ghost would dare face Ethan, which may have been quite true. On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs. Hill to add to our supply of eggs, fillet his hens having unaccountably failed to supply their quota. I went in, leaving my companion in the car. No one else was in the shop. An impulse prompted me to put a question to the little woman whose life had been spent in this neighborhood. Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of any one named

desire Mitchell, I asked. She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me. Her sallow, wrinkled face lightened with curiosity and an absurd primness. Now, Mr. Locke, I'd like to know where a young city fella like you got that old story from. I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me. She was a witch? She was a hussy, said Mrs. Hill, I was a little girl when she ran away from her father's respectable house, fifty-odd years ago. The disgrace killed him, being a clergyman, and the gossip that came back later and pitches of her in such dresses.

Dear, dear, the wicked certainly have opportunities. Fifty years ago, I echoed, dazed by this intrusion of a third desire, Mitchell. ah nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive to-day which she ain't why she changed her name to one fancier that you might have heard talk of she was the name she gave me i shall not set down it is enough to say it was that of a superwoman whose beauty genius and absolute lack of conscience set europe ablaze for a while a torch of womanhood quenched at the highest burning hour of her career by a sudden and violent death there was an older house once on your place she added pensively did you know that it stood in the hollow where your lake is now two three hundred years old folks say it was one night it burned down in a big thunderstorm the mitchell's then living had your house built over by the orchard then and had a dam built across so as to cover up the old site with water all the mitchells lived there till the last one went missionary abroad and died in foreign parts i mean the hussy's brother he took up his father's work feeling a strong call he was only a young boy when his sister went off but he felt it dreadful he was a hard man on the sinner preached head

Hell and damnation all his days he did. Lean over the pulpit he would, his eyes flaming fire, and his tongue shrivelin folks in their pews, I can tell you. He left children, I asked. No, sir, Reverend never married. He felt women a snare. Land, not much snaring with what farm women get to wear around here. I've kind of thought of one of those blue-fil-ard silks with white,

spots into it since before I married Hill but never came any nearer than pricing it and bringing home a sample. He was death on sweet odors and soft raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are ten-cent bottles Hill makes the peddler throw in when we trade. I'd do fancy jockey club for special times, and I've got a reasonable hope of salvation too. I notice your cousin, Mrs. Veer has sent in her handkerchief weekdays, as well as when she's going somewhere. So I guess you don't hold with the Reverend Mitchell in New York? I laughed with her as I took up the bag of eggs. Did the runaway sister leave any children? I queried.

Not a Mitchell alive anywhere, she asserted positively. Dead, all dead. The Reverend was buried at his mission in some outlandish place. and if those heathen women dress like i've seen in the movin pictures palace in the village i don't know how he makes out to rest with them flaunting past his grave i went thoughtfully out to the car indeed i drove home in such abstraction that philida reproved me the cat is stolen your tongue she teased or did mrs hill vamp you and make roast meat of your heart with her eyes phil do you put scent on your handkerchief week-days as well as sundays i shook off thought to inquire no i keep sashay in my handkerchief box why next time you're in town will you buy a blue silk fulard dress with white spots in it and the largest bottle of jockey club extract on sale and give them to mrs hill for a christmas present i'll give you a blank check cousin roger why so i told her why but i did not tell her the story of the second desire mitchell nor of the original house that stood in the hollow now filled by our lake why had a peculiar horror crept through me when mrs hill told me what ruins that water covered why had i remembered the inexplicable repugnant sound that on several occasions had preceded the coming of the monster

a sound like the smack of huge lips or somebody withdrawn from thick slime was entrance into human air open to the alien thing only through the ruins of the house where it had been first called by the sorceress of long ago? We were walking across from the garage, after putting away the car, when a recollection flashed upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York, held a portrait by a famous French artist of that incendiary beauty whose name it now appeared cloaked the identity of Desire Mitchell, daughter and sister of New England clergyman. I had seen the portrait, and piled in an intricate magnificence of curls, puffs, and coils about the haughty little head of the lady, was her gold-bronze hair, the color of the braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.

I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech Featherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor coarse wood-cut and the French portrait. the long dark eyes with their expression of blended drowsiness and watchfulness were too individual to have escaped either record moreover both pictures resembled that face of ivory and dusk i had glimpsed in the ray of the electric torch all clouded and surrounded by swirls of gray vapour shot with gold who and what was the girl desire mitchell whom i had come to love through a more profound darkness than that of the sight it seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon i sorted my music there was the score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that it could be sent to those who waited for it veer would attend to that if to-night made it necessary i reflected with disappointment that the first rehearsals would begin in a couple of weeks and i had looked forward to this production with special interest there was the symphony still unfinished that i had hoped might be more enduring than popular music if i was to be less enduring than either we must go glimmering on our ways if i snatched desire out of her path into mine, she and I would see all those things together. I finished at last and set my room

in order. There was a fire laid ready for lighting in my hearth, a mere artistic flourish in such weather. I kindled it and put in the flames three of the volumes from the ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult science. Those three were vile and poisonous. no doubt other copies exist but at least i refused to be guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in philida's household they burned quietly enough and meekly fell to ashes under my poker our round dinner-table was cheerful as usual with yellow-shaded candles flanking a bowl of yellow and scarlet nasturtiums but i found its mistress suffering from a nervous headache It is only the fog, she answered our sympathy. It came on with the evening somehow. Never mind me.

Christina has made a cream of lettuce bisque, and she will never forgive us if we do not eat every bit. Yes, Ethan, of course, I'll take mine. I only wish every bush and tree would not drip, drip like a horrid kind of clock ticking. And the foghorns over at the lighthouse's, move regularly every half-minute. And I never heard the waterfall over the dam so loud. We've had a wet summer, Veer observed, soothingly tranquil as ever. The lake and creek are full.

There is more water going over to make a noise. Please do not be so frightfully sensible, drawls. You know I mean a different loudness. It sort of rises up and swims all over. one then dies away even a fountain will seem to do that if a wind shifts a spray i suggested yes cousin roger but there is no wind to-night a discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder i fancied veer was similarly affected if something moved under the water we changed the conversation to a pergola planned for building next spring that was to be overrun by grape vines and honeysuckle the grapes shall hang through like an italian pitcher philaday anticipated headache forgotten in her enthusiasm she shook her hair about her pink cheeks leaning over to outline a pergola with four spoons here in the middle we must have a bird bath or no the birds might peck the grapes we could have one of those big silver-colour looking balls on a pedestal to reflect wee views of the garden and lake and sky with people moving no bigger than dolls imagine a reflection of ethne like a lillipusian so high so i was able to leave her eagerly hunting catalogues of garden ornaments in her sewing-room when the time came for me to keep my rendezvous with death or the lady in spite of my warning gesture

veer followed me into the hall. His dark face was distressed and anxious. "'Let me go with you,' he urged. "'No, thanks. Stay with Phil and keep her too busy to suspect where I am.' "'If I'm doing wrong to let you go,' he began, "'you cannot stop me. It is still too early for danger, I think.

If you like, you can stroll out on the lawn from time to time and look up at my windows. As long as the lamps are lighted in the room, I am all right. Nothing is happening. Your lamps were all three lighted when I found you last night, he said. The darkness had been only for my eyes, then? Certainly I had seemed to see light withdrawn from the lamps. I mastered a tremor of the nerves, and covering it by stroking baghira, who sat in a hall chair making an after-dinner toilet with tongue and paw. Well, take care of Phil, I repeated, evading argument. He detained me. The young lady might not come if there were two people, Mr. Locke. I can see that. But I'll go instead. I guess I'd be safer

than you with the—the—you know what I mean. It would be the first time for me. It would be the first time for me. And if I sat waiting in the dark, the lady couldn't tell you were not there. Of course, I'd bring her right to you. No one could appreciate the courage of that offer so well as we who had both felt the intolerable horror of the nearness of the thing whose nature was beyond our nature to endure. She would come to no one except me, I refused, but thank you. And, Veer, if a If what you have said about my feeling toward Philida's husband was true once, it is true no longer. His clasp was still warm in my hand when I went into my room and switched on the lights. Soft and colorful, the haunted room sprang into view.

The writing table and piano gleamed bare without their usual burdens of scattered papers and music removed that afternoon. for lack of familiar occupation when I sat down in my favorite place I took up the gold pommender and fell to studying the intricate designs worked in the metal containing a rare herb of Jerusalem called ladies rose resembling spikenard with vervane and cedar and secret simples vervane which is powerful against evil spirits The strange fragrance, heady as the bouquet of rich wine, never cloying, exquisite, might well have seemed magical to the dry Puritans, I mused. It should stay with me tonight, like a promise of her coming. After I had sat there a while, I turned out the lights. End of Chapter 17, recording by Roger Maline.

Chapter 18 of the Thirteen of the Thirteen. from the lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram, Chapter 18. An excellent way to get a fairy, and when you have her, bind her. Ancient alchemist's recipe. In the darkness, time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving, hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes, likened by Philida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding board for furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The thought of Philida and veer down in the pleasant living room tempted me almost beyond resistance.

I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the room, to fling myself into my car, and drive full speed. until strength failed and gasoline gave out. Was that the lake which stirred in the windless night? The lake under which lay the fire-blackened ruins of the house where the first Desire Mitchell flung open an awful door that her vengeance might stride through? Was it too late for my desire to come, and time for the coming of that other?

The step of veer sounded on the gravel path where he walked beneath the window. He was making a trip of inspection and would find no light shining from the room. I was about to rise and called down a word of reassurance to him when a current of spiced air passed by me. I sat arrested in hope and expectancy. Here, after my warning, after last night,

her soft voice panted across the dark, will you die then cruel to me and wicked to come here again oh must i wish you were a coward every vestige of her calmness gone she was sobbing as she spoke i could imagine she was wringing the little hands that once had left a betraying print upon my table's surface i was cruel to you last night desire yet afterward you saved my life by sending ethan veer to wake me would you have had me leave without meeting you again neither thanking you nor asking your forgiveness i thought she came nearer for so little you would brave the dread one in its time of triumph oh steadfast soldier who faces the breach even in the hour of death and all that you have done you have remembered me why speak of anger or forgiveness have i not injured you never i love you is not that an injury even though i hid my ill-omened face from you reared as i was to sad knowledge of the wrath upon me the wrong has been done weak as water in the test i kept the letter of my promise and broke the intent yet go keep life at least desire i do not understand you i answered no matter for that now i am content to share whatever you bring

not roughly or in challenge as i asked you last night but earnestly and with humility i ask you to come away with me now if trouble comes to my wife and me i do not doubt we can bear it let us not be frightened from the attempt come i to take happiness like that she marvelled in desolate amazement no at least i will go to my own place if tardily roger be kind to me give me a last gift let me know that somewhere you are living out of my sight out of my knowledge but living in the same world with me each moment you stay here is a risk in that warning she had reason i rose it was time to act but action must be certain if my groping movements missed her in the dark there might be no second chance desire if all is as you say and we are not to meet again as we have done you shall let me touch you before i go i said firmly no yes why would you have me live all the years to come in doubt whether you were a woman or a dream perhaps you might seem at last a phantom of my own sick brain to which faithfulness would be folly here across the table i stretch my arm lay your palm in my palm i may die to-night whether she wished it also or whether my my resolve drew obedience, I do not know. But a vague figure moved through the dark toward me.

A hand settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting bird. I closed my hand hotly upon that one. I sprang a step aside from the table between us, found her, and drew her to me. What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance. draperies beneath which beat life and warmth as i stooped to reassure her her breath curled against my cheek so with that guide i turned my head and set my lips on the lips i had never seen did something up rear itself out there in the black fog a cold air rushed across the summer heat of the fog air foul as if issued from the open door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with a faint tinkling sound. I snapped to Zyre Mitchell off her feet and sprang for the door. Somehow I found and opened it at the first essay. We were out into the hall.

With one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then carried her on to the head of the stairs. There I set her down, but stood before her as a bar against any attempt at escape. A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked at my captive. Never again after that kiss could she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom. So far, my victory was complete. The lady might be angry, but it must be woman's anger. I knew she had not suspected my intention until I lifted her in my arms.

She had struggled then, after her defenses had fallen. She was quiet now, as though the light had quelled her resistance. She stood drooped and trembling. Not the old-time witch, not the dazzling adventurers. Only a small, fragile girl wound and wrapped in some gray stuff that even covered the brightness of her hair. Her face was held down and showed no more color than a water-lily.

I thought, she whispered just audibly, I thought you would say goodbye. I know, I stammered, but I could not. That way was impossible for us. She did not contradict me. She was so very small, I saw, that her head would reach no higher than where the bright spot had rested above my heart when i had last stood at the barrier one hand gripped the veils beneath her chin and seemed the clenched fist of a child the crash of my door had startled the household i had heard philida cry out and veers running steps upon the gravel path now he came springing up the stairs at the head of the flight at the head of the flight

he stopped, staring at us. Desire, I spoke as naturally as I could manage. This is Mr. Veer. Veer, my fiancé, Miss Mitchell. Shall we go down to Philida? And Desire Mitchell did not deny my claim. I am not very sure of how we found ourselves downstairs, nor do I remember in what words we made the two girls known to one another.

presently we were all in the living-room and philida had possession of desire mitchell while veer and i looked on stupidly at the proceedings phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor lamp and gently drew off the draperies that hooded her with little murmurs of compassion she unbound and shook free her guest's hair my dear you are all damp this awful fog you must have been out a long time you shall drink some tea before we start drawls will you light the alcohol lamp on the tea-table the kettle is filled now i could understand how desire had appeared amid a drift of fire-shot smoke in the beam of my electric torch the night before her hair was a garment of flame-bright-bright-lighted her hair was a garment of flame-bright silk flowing around her, curling and eddying in rich abundance. Over this she had worn the gray veils to smother all that color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and shadows. No wonder her face had seemed wraith-like when her startled, shrinking away from the light had said all that drapery billowing about her. She was the voice that had been my intimate

comrade through weeks of strange adventure. she was the woman of the faded yellow book and the painted beauty at the metropolitan she was all the desires of whom i had ever dreamed and she was none of them for she was herself her long dark eyes suddenly lifted to me were individual by that ancestral blending of drowsiness and watchfulness yet were akin to the eyes of youth in all times by their innocence her mouth too was the soft mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid life but her forehead the noble breadth between the black tracery of her eyebrows expressed the student whose weird lofty knowledge had so often abashed my ignorance only my ignorance now as she looked at me across the room all self-confidence trickled away from me what distinguished me from a thousand men she might meet on any city street what had i ever said worth note in the hours we had spent together now she saw me in the light plainly commonplace and remembering myself lame i stood amazed at the audacity with which I had laid claim to her. She was rising from the chair,

gently putting aside Philida's detaining hands. She had not spoken one word since her faltered speech to me upstairs. Neither Veer nor Philida had heard her voice. She had given her hand to each of them and submitted to Phil's care with the docility I failed to recognize in my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement now,

was more like the desire Mitchell I knew. Only, what was she about to do? Repudiate my violence and me, perhaps go back to her hiding place? She came straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were, to her preoccupation. You must go away, she said. if there is any hope it is in that. Nothing else matters now, nothing. If you wish, take me with you. It would be wiser to leave me,

but nothing really matters except that you should not stay here. I will obey you in everything if you will only go. Take your car and drive, drive fast, anywhere. It is impossible to convey the desperate earth, urgency and fervor of her low voice. Philida uttered an exclamation of fear. Veer wheeled about and left the room. The front door closed behind him.

The gravel crunched under his tread on the path to the garage, and the rate at which the light he carried moved through the fog showed that he was running. He obviously accepted the warning, exactly as it was given. After the briefest indecision, Philida hurried out into the hall. For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I had made discovery of two places where I was not the lame feller, and if the first place was the dreary frontier,

the second country was that rich land of promise in Desire Mitchell's eyes. What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this account. philida was back promptly her arms full of garments with little murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment she proceeded to invest desire in a motor-coat and a dark blue velvet hat rather like an artist's tamashanter i noticed then that the girl wore a plain frock of gray stuff long of sleeve and skirt fastened at the base of her throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of t'ry stuff long of sleeve and skirt fastened at the base of her throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of tint and contour. Nothing farther from the fashion of the day, or the figure of my cousin could be imagined. You must wear the coat, because it is always cool motoring at night, Philida was murmuring, and of course you will want it at a hotel, unless you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your gorgeous, scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I know I haven't enough hairpins to put it up

without wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them in the morning. We are going to take the very best care of you every minute, so you must not worry. You are so kind to me, desire began tremulously. No one was ever so kind. It does not matter about me, or what people think of me, if he will only go away from here quickly. Right away, Philida soothed, My husband has gone for the car.

I hear him coming now. In fact, Veer was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the knob of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him. Then the knob yielded and he was inside. But how slow you are, draws, his wife called with an accent of wonder. Veer crossed the threshold of the room,

his gaze seeking mine. He was pale, and drops of fog moisture purled his dark face like sweat. I am sorry, Mr. Locke, he addressed me, ignoring the others. Perhaps you felt that shake-up a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake, or the kick from a big explosion along ways off. It didn't seem very strong to me.

It was too strong for that old tree by the garage, though. Must have been decayed clear through inside. Willows are like that, tricky when they get old. Ethan, what are you talking about? cried Philida, aghast. He continued to look at me. I guess it must have fallen just about when you slammed your door upstairs. Seems I do remember a sort of second crash following the noise you made. I was too too much. I was too much. keen on finding out what was happening up there to pay much heed. Well, Veer? Tree smashed down through the roof of the garage, he reluctantly gave his report.

Everything under the hood of the automobile is wrecked. There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk, mixed up with broken wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage. so there was to be no going to-night from the house beside the lake a frustrated group we stood amid our preparations the two girls wearing cloaks and hats for the drive that would never be taken had we ever really expected to go already the project was fading into the realm of fantastic ideas futile as the pretended journeys of children who were kept in their nursery desire lifted her hands and took off the blue velvet cap with a resignation more expressive than words only my practical little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles we aren't ever going to give up she cried protest cousin roger ethan you cannot mean to give up why phone to the nearest garage to send us another car if we pay them enough they will drive anywhere.

Or if they cannot take us to New York, they will take us to the railroad station where we can get a train for some place. Can't we drawls? We could, Veer admitted. I'd admire to try it anyhow. But the telephone wire came across the place right past the garage, you know.

The tree tore the wire down, too? I'm afraid it snapped right in two, Bill? We might walk, she essayed. But even her brave voice trailed into silence as she glanced toward the black, dripping night beyond the windows. Or, if we found a horse and wagon, she murmured a final suggestion. Veer shook his head. Come, I assume, charge with a cheerfulness not quite sincere.

None of us are ready for such desperate, efforts to leave our cozy quarters here. Especially as I fancy Veer's earthquake was the tremor of an approaching thunderstorm. I felt it myself. Let us light all the lamps and draw the curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought beyond reason. Suppose we sit here together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until daylight.

i think that should be safeguard enough to-morrow we will do all we had planned for to-night come in veer and close the door he obeyed me at once desire mitchell passively suffered me to unfasten and take off the coat she wore too heavy for such a night she had uttered no word since veer announced the destruction of the car she did not speak now when i put her in the low chair beneath the lamp i had a greed of light for her as a protection and because darkness had held her so long it seems as if we should do something phillida yielded unwillingly veer's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing the last curtain we were both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow-tree through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not have carried it through the roof. To do something by way of physical escape from that, the ribbon had glided from Desire's hair,

almost as if the vital, resilient mass resentfully freed itself from restraint by the bit of satin. Now she put up her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders, veiling her face. Wait, she answered, Philida, most unexpectedly. I must be sure, quite sure. I must think.

If you will wait. End of Chapter 18. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 19 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the first. public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter nineteen o little book how darts thou put thyself in press for dread chaucer we sat quietly waiting i had drawn a chair near desire philida and veer were together chairs touching her right hand curled into his left bagheera the cat had slipped into the room before the door was closed and lay pressed against his mistress's stout little boot our small garrison was assembled surely for as strange a defense as ever sober moderns undertook

for my part it was wonder enough to study that captive who was at once so strange yet so intimately well known to me the tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed midnight soon after we began to experience the first break in the heavy monotony of heat and fog that had overlaid the place for three days the temperature began to fall the fog did not lift the flowered croton curtains hung straight from their rods unstirred by any movement of air but the atmosphere in the room steadily grew colder i saw philida shiver in the chilled dampness and pull closer the collar of her thin blouse when desire finally spoke we three started as if her low tones had been the clang of a hammer i have tried to judge what is best she said not raising her face from its shadowing veil of hair i am not very wise but it seems better that there should be no ignorance between us if i had been either wise or good i should never have come down from the convent to draw another into danger and horror without purpose or hope of any good ending the convent i echoed memory turning to the bleak building far up the hillside you came from there there is a path through the woods i am very strong and vigorous but i had to wait until all there were asleep before I could come. Sometimes I could not come at all. For this house I had my father's old key.

It was only for this little time while I am being taught. Soon I will put on a nun's dress and cut my hair, and, and never, never leave there anymore. Stupified, I thought of the black loneliness of the wooded hillside behind us. No wonder the fog was wet upon her hair. Her slight feet had traversed that path night after night, had brought her to the door her key-fitted, had come through the dark house to the door of the room upstairs. When she left me, she had toiled that desolate way back. For what? Humility bent me and bewilderment. But why, Philida gasped? Why? Why? Because. cousin roger hunted everywhere to find you he would have gone anywhere you told him to see you didn't you know that i never meant him to see me why not

i am desire mitchell fourth of that name all women who brought misfortune upon those who cared for them she answered her voice lower still how shall i make you understand i was brought up to know the wrath and doom upon me, yet I myself can scarcely understand. My father knew all, yet he fell in weakness. "'Your father?' I questioned, recalling Mrs. Hill's positive genealogy of the Mitchells, in which there was no place for this daughter of the line. He was the last of his family. When he was very young, the conviction came to him that his duty was never to marry, so our race might cease to exist. He lived here and preached against evil. He studied the ancient learning that he might be fitted to wrestle with sin. But in the end,

horror of what was here gained upon him, so that he closed the house and went abroad to work as a missionary. There was a girl, the daughter of the clergyman who was leaving the mission. My father fell in love. He forgot all his convictions and married her. He knew it was a sin, but it was stronger than he was. She only lived one year. When I was born, she died. He prayed that I would die too, but I...

Her voice died into silence. I ventured to lean nearer and take her hand into mine. desire i said why should you be a sufferer for the actions of a woman who died over two centuries ago what is the long dead desire mitchell to you a strange and solemn hush followed my question the words seemed to take a significance and importance beyond their simple meaning the hand i held trembled in my clasp she answered at last just audibly you know you said that you had read her book but the book tells so little desire just such a chronicle of superstition as may be found in a hundred old records she shook her head slightly not that bring me the book the book was upstairs in the room from which i had carried her half an hour before in something very like a panic flight. Before I could release her hand and rise,

before I comprehended his intention, Veer was out of the living room and upon the stairs. It was too late to overtake him. The man who had been a professional skater covered the stairs in a few easy swinging strides. We heard his light tread on the floor overhead, heard him stop beside the table where the book lay. Then he was returning.

My door closed. His steps sounded on the stairs again. In a moment he was back among us and quietly offering the volume to our guest. His dark eyes met mine reassuringly, deprecating the thoughts I am sure my face expressed. Lights burning and all serene up there, he announced. Desire touched the book with a curious repugnance.

I was looking for this the first night I came here, she murmured. That is why I came to America after my father died. I had promised him to destroy this record. When I heard that the house was sold to a gentleman from New York, I came down from the convent on the hill to find the bookcase holding the old history. I did not know anyone was here that night until you touched my hair. i remembered the bookcase near the bed where i stood my candle and matches unaware i had prevented her finding the things she sought and so forced her to return afterward the house had been full of workmen making alterations and improvements until later still philida had transferred the bookcase and its contents to her sewing-room

if i had not taken the whim to sleep in the old house on the night of my purchase or if i had chosen another room the existence of desire mitchell might never have been known to me would the creature from the barrier have appeared to me if i had not known her she was drawing something from behind the portrait of the first desire mitchell a thin small book that had lain concealed between the cover of the larger volume and the page barren the woodcut, where a sort of pocket was formed that had escaped our notice. Laid upon the table, the little book rolled away from the girl's fingers and lay curled upon itself in the lamplight. The limp Morocco cover was spotted with mildew, and half-revealed pages of close, fine writing, blotched in places with rusty stains. It gave out an odor of mold and age in an atmosphere made sweet by desire's presence. Philida, who had been silent even when Veer left her to go upstairs,

shrank away from the book on the table. She darted a glance over her shoulder at the curtained windows behind her. "'Drawls, I cannot help what everybody thinks of me,' she said plaintively. "'I am cold. The fire is ready laid in the grate. Will you put a match to it, please?' no one smiled at the request her husband uttered some soothing phrase of compliance we all looked on while the flame caught and began to creep up among the apple logs bagheera rose and changed his position to one before the hearth when veer stood erect desire lean toward him will you read aloud sir she asked of him and made a gesture toward the morocco book she surprised us all by that choice

i was unreasoning enough to feel slighted although the task was one for which i felt a strong dislike i fancied veer liked the idea no better from his expression however he offered no demure but sat down at the table and began to flatten the war pages that perversely sprang back and clung about his fingers. Desire slowly turned her lovely eyes to me, eyes that looked by gift of nature as if their long corners had been brushed with coal. She said nothing, yet somehow conveyed her meaning and intent. I understood that she did not wish to hear me read those pages, that it was painful to her that they should be read at all. VIR was ready. He glanced around our circle, then began with the simple directness that

gave him a dignity peculiarly his own. Mistress Desire Mitchell, her book, beginning at the 19th year of her age, he read in his leisurely voice. The living Desire Mitchell and I were regarding one another. I smiled at the quaint wording, but she shuddered and put her head. hands across her eyes. Yet there was nothing in those first pages except a girl's chronicle of village life. This book evidently carried on a diary kept from early childhood, a diary written out of loneliness. Apparently the bare colonial life pressed heavily upon the writer, who, having no companions of the intellect, turned to this record of her own mind

as a prisoner might talk to his reflection in a mirror rather than go mad for, from sheer silence. Discontent and restlessness beat through the lines like fluttering wings. She wrote of her own beauty with a cool appraisal oddly removed from vanity, almost with resentment of a possession she could not use. Like a man who finds treasure in a desert aisle, I am rich in coin that I may not spend, she wrote. I stand before my mirror and take it. a tress of my hair in either hand. I spread wide my arms full reach, yet I cannot touch the end of those tresses, nor can my two hands clasp the bulk of them. There have been other women who had such

hair, who were of body straight and white, and had the eyes, but I cannot read that they stayed poor and obscure. There followed some quotations from the classics, of which I was able to give but vague translations when Veer passed the book to me, both because my knowledge was scanty, and because of their daring unconventionality. There were allusions, too, to ladies of later history who had found fairness a broad staircase for ambition to mount. Of the writer's learning, there could be no question, a learning amazing in one so young and so situated. The source of this became a little. apparent. Her father was consumed with the passion of scholarship, and the girl's hungry mind

fed in the pastures where he led the way. Here crept into view an anomaly of character. The austere Puritan divine, whose life was open and blank, bare and cold as a winter field, cherished a secret dissipation of the mind. He labored upon a book on the errors of magic. laboring, he became snared by the thing he denounced. He believed in the hidden lore while he condemned it. Deeper and deeper into forbidden knowledge, his eagerness for research led him, unsanctioned by any church where the books Dr. Mitchell starved his body to buy from Jews or other furtive dealers in unusual wares. The titles in his library comprehended the names of more charlatans than bishops. He could define the distinctions between necromancy,

sorcery, and magic. The marvelous calculations of the Pythagorean's engaged him, and the lost mysteries of the Kabiri. From such studies he would arise on the Sabbath to preach sermons that held his dull flock agape. Bitter drafts of salvation he poured for their spiritual drinking. He scarcely saw how any man might escape hellfire, all being so vile. Against witchcraft and tampering with Satan's agents, he was eloquent. He rode 60 miles in midwinter to see a Quaker whipped, and a woman hung who had been convicted as a witch. Of all this, his daughter wrote with an elfin mockery. Her brilliant eye of youth saw

through the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to reconcile. She learned his lore, read his books, and discarded his doctrine. I study with him, but I think alone, she set down her independence. Without his knowledge,

she proceeded to actual experiment with rude crucible and alembic in her own chamber. She essayed some age-old recipes of blended herbs and ingredients within her reach, handled at certain hours of the night and phases of the moon. All were innocent enough, it seemed. She cured a beloved old dog of rheumatism and partial blindness. She discovered an exquisite perfume which she named Rose of Jerusalem. But the experiments were not fortunate, made obscure complaint. The dog, cured, lived only a few weeks. The perfume, in which she reveled with a fierce, long-denied appetite, steeping her rich hair in it and her severely dull

garments, awoke many whispers in a community where sweet odors were unknown and disapproved. She alluded, with the mingling of freezing scorn and triumph, to the young men who followed after her, seeking a wife who would be at their hearth as fatal a guest as that fair woman sent by an enemy to Alexander the Great, whose honey-breath was deadly poison to whoso kissed there. Into this situation rode the fine gentleman from the colonial world of fashion, who was to fix the fate of Desire Mitchell and his own. From this point on, the diary was a record of the same story as The History of the History of the of ye foul witch desire mitchell the love affair that followed sir austin's visit to the clergyman's house leaped hot and instant as flame from oil and fire brought together

the girl was parched with thirst for life yet despised all around her the man was dazzled by a beauty and mentality foreign as a bird of paradise found nested in connecticut's snow a mad wild passion linked them that was more than half a duel for sir austin was already betrothed honor might not have chained him for long but his need of his betrothed fortune proved more enduring he was a man bred to wealth who did not possess it he offered desire mitchell his left hand he was turned out of her father's house with a red wheeled struck across his face like a brand. Of course he returned. The arrow was firmly fixed. He asked her to marry him and was refused with savage contempt.

He would not take the refusal. Her heart and ambition were hidden traitors to his cause. In the end, she surrendered and the marriage day was set. Sir Austin rode away to say, set his house in order while desire turned from alchemy to make her wedding garments the entries during this interval were sweetly gentle and feminine her rose of jerusalem fragrance was all her own and was kept so but she made lesser rare essences and sold them through a pedlar in order to buy fine linen and brocade for a trousseau not designed to be worn in a puritan village she was happy and at rest in expectation. On her wedding day, the destroying news fell.

Sir Austin hid a weak spirit within a strong and handsome body. Away from Desire's glamour, back in New York, he had not broken his engagement to the heiress. Instead, he had married her on the day arranged before he met the clergyman's daughter. There was never again a connected, record in the diary. Pages were torn out in places, entries were broken off, half-made. But the story, Veer's slow, steady voice conveyed to us, was the one we knew,

the one my desire had told to me the first night I slept in this house. The half-mad girl turned to her father's deadly books. Sir Austin died as his waxen image dissolved before. the fire where the girl sat watching with merciless hate. He died, raving and frothing on her door-sill. She never saw him after the day he rode away to prepare for their marriage. She set open her window that she might hear his progress to that hard death, but never deigned to turn her glance upon him. The clergyman was dead now, of shame, or perhaps of terror at the child he had reared. The girl was alone. The diary grew wilder, with gaps of weeks where there

were no entries. More frequently, pages were missing, and paragraphs obliterated by the reddish blotches like rust or blood. There were accounts of weird, half-told experiments, ranging through the three degrees of magic set forth by Talmud and Kabbalah. She wrote of Ledeh of kingdoms between earth and heaven and the twelve unearthly worlds of Plato. She alluded to a barrier between men and other orders of beings, beyond which dwelt those whom the magicians of old glimpsed after long toil and incantation. Those of whom Vertabiod, the Armenian, says, their orders differ from one another in situation and degree of glory,

just as there are different ranks among men, though they are all of one nature. They cannot cross nor overthrow this wall, nor can man alone, but if they and man join together, one there beyond whispers to me of power, splendor, victory. Days later there was entered a passage of mad triumph and terror. The barrier was broken through. out of the breach issued the one whom she had invited to her silver lamps colossal formless whose approach froze blood and spirit eyes of unspeakable meaning glared across the dark whispers unbearable to humanity beat upon her intelligence and named her comrade now as veer read this i felt again that quiver of the house or air he had likened to an earth shock and held responsible for the fall of the willow tree that had destroyed our hope of escape by automobile. I looked at my companions and saw no evidence of anyone having noticed what I had seemed to feel.

Veer indeed was pale, while Philida, who sat beside him, was highly flushed with excitement and wonder as she listened. desire had not stirred in her chair except to bend her head so her face was shaded by the loosened richness of her hair seeing them so undisturbed i kept silence a storm might be approaching but i made no pretense to myself of believing that shock either thunder or earthquake the tone of the diary altered rapidly at first the unknown from beyond the wall appalled the woman only by its unhuman strangeness, the repugnance of flesh and blood for its loathly neighborhood. Fear emanated from its presence, seen yet unseen, a blackness moving in the black of night when it visited her. Yet she had courage to endure those awful colloquies. She listened. She strove by the spell and incantation to subdue this to her service, as the demon Orthone served the Lord of Karras, as Paracelsus was served by his familiar,

or Jig by the spirit of his ring. Alas for the sorceress, misguided by legend and fantasy. She had evoked no phantom, but a fact actual as nature always is even if nature is not humanly understood. The thing was real. the awe of the magician became the stricken panic of the woman she had unloosed what she could not bind she had called a servant and gained a master gone forever were the dreams of power and splendor and triumph now she learned that only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has summoned nor could a murderess attain that lofty art we were given a glimpse of a frantic girl crouched in the useless pentagram traced on the floor for her protection covering her beauty with the cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon her between the overturned silver lamps a deepening horror gathered about the house of mistress desire mitchell the old dame who had been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place and fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child would come near the garden, though fruit and nuts rotted away where they

dropped from overrightness. No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin had died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By night she waged hideous battle against her visitor, using woman's cunning, assaying every expedient and art her book suggested to her desperate need. with each conflict her strength and resource waned while that which she held at bay knew no weariness time was not for it nor change of purpose i faint i fail she wrote the sea of dread breaks about my feet it is midnight the pentagram fades from the floor the nine lamps die the breath of the one at the casement is upon me veer stopped a handful of pages have been torn out here he stated the next entry that i can read is in the middle of a stained page and must be considerably later on philida made an odd little noise like a whimper clutching at his sleeve the third shock for which i had been waiting shuddered through the house this time distinctly enough for all to feel a gust of wind went through the wet trees outside like a gasp ethne what was that she stammered oh i'm afraid cousin roger i had no voice to answer her in my ears was the rush and surge of that sea whose waters had gripped me in the past night

i felt the icy death-tide hiss around me in its first returning wave rise to my knees height then sink away down its unearthly beach what i had dimly known all day underlying veer's sturdy cheerfulness and our plans and efforts was the truth through those intervening hours of daylight i had remained my enemy's prisoner bound on that shore we both knew well until it pleased or had power to return and finish with me no doubt it was governed by laws as we are as before the cold struck a paralysis across my senses veer's reassurance sounded faint and distant the thunder is getting closer he said that was a storm wind all right would you rather go upstairs and lie down and not hear any more of this stuff to-night no oh no i could not bear to be alone she refused Just, just go on, dear. Of course it is the coming storm that makes the room so cold. He put his left arm around her as she nestled against him.

His right hand held the diary flattened on the table under the light. The next entry is just one line in the middle of a page where everything else has blotted out, Veer repeated. It reads, The child is a week old today. The wave crashed foaming and tumult up the strand, flowing higher, drenching me in cold, sharp as fire. The tide rose faster tonight. The silence that held the others dumb before the significance of that last sentence covered my silence from notice. Desire's face was quite hidden.

Lamplight and firelight wavered and gleamed across her bent head. I wanted to arise and go to her, to take her hands and tell her to have patience and courage. But when this wave ebbed, my strength drained away with the receding water. Moreover, the darkness curdled and moved beyond the window opposite me. The curtains hung between were no bar to my vision, as the light and presence of my companions were no bar to the thing that kept rendezvous with me. since last night we were nearer to one another a breath of chill foulness crept across the pungent odor of the burning apple log in the fireplace a whisper spoke to my intelligence man conquered by me fall down before me beg my forbearance beg life of me and take the gift

No, my thought answered it. You die, man. All men die. Not as they die who are mine. I am not yours. You kill me as a wild beast might, but I am not yours. Not dying nor dead am I yours.

Would you not live, pigmy? Not as your pensioner. The logs on the hearth crackled and sank down with a soft rustle, burned through to a core of glowing red. Philida spoke with a hushed urgency, drawing still closer to her husband so that her forehead rested against his shoulder. Go on, Ethan, finish and let us be done.

Veer bent his head above the book on the table to obey her. Across the dark, suddenly saw the eyes glare in upon him. On the next page, the writing begins again, he said. It says, I am offered the kingdom of earth, but I crave that kingdom of myself which I cast away. The child is sent to England.

The circle is drawn. The names are traced and the lamps filled. Tonight I make the last essay. There remains untried one mighty spell. This mystery! A clap of thunder right over the house overwhelmed the reader's voice. Philida screamed as a violent wind volleyed through the place with a crashing of doors and shutters, upstairs and down.

The diary was ripped from beneath Veer's hand and hurled straight to the center of that nest of fire formed by the settling of the logs. A long tongue of flame leaped high in the chimney as the spread leaves of the book caught and flared, fanned by wind and draft. Veer sprang up, but Philida's clinging arms delayed him. When he reached the fire-tongs,

there was nothing to rescue, except a charring mass halfway toward ashes. He turned toward me, perhaps at last surprised by my immobility. I am sorry, Mr. Locke, he apologized. Desire had started up with the others when the sudden uproar of the storm burst upon them. Now she cried out, breaking Veer's excuse of the loss. Her small face blanched, she ran a few steps toward me.

It has come! He will die! He is dying! Look! Look! end of chapter nineteen recording by roger maline chapter twenty of the thing from the lake this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram chapter twenty behold where are their abodes their places are not even as though they had not been tomb of king an teth desire mitchell was beside me and i could not rise or answer her she bent over me so that the rose of jerusalem fragrance inundated me and drove back the sickening air that was the breath of our enemy let me go she sobbed her head beside my head if you can hear me listen and leave me as it wills you know now that i belong to it by heritage you know why we can never be together as you planned try to feel horror of me put me away from you no evil can come to me unless i seek evil but it will not suffer you to take me live dear roger and let me go yield to me man what you may not keep the whisper of the thing followed after her voice would you take the witch-child to your hearth cast her off and taste my pardon can you hear roger roger let me go with an effort terrible to make as death to meet i broke from the paralysis that chained me

as from the drag of a whirlpool i tore myself from the tide clutch from the will of the thing from the numb weakness upon me for a moment i thrust back the hand at my throat i stood up and drew desire up with me in my arms both of us reeling with my unsteadiness. I do not give you up, I said, my speech hoarse and difficult. I claim you, now and after, and my claim is good, because I pay. Desire exclaimed something. What, I do not know. Her voice was lost in the triumphant conviction that I was right. She was free, and the freedom was my gift to her.

i was not vanquished but victor the life i paid was not a penalty but a price her face was uplifted to mine as she clung to me then my weight glided through her arms and i fell back in my chair i was alone amid blackness and desolation that poured past me like the wind above the world for the last time i opened my eyes on the gray shore at the foot of the barrier i pigmy indeed stood again before the colossal wall whose palisades reared up beyond vision and stretched away beyond vision on either side i was alone here no whisper of taunt or menace no presence of horror troubled me opposite me the breach that split the cliff showed as a shadowed canyon empty except of dread far out behind me the sea that was like no sea of earth gathered itself beneath its eternal mists as a tidal wave draws and gathers with folded arms i stood there waiting for the returning surge of mighty waters to overwhelm me in their flood i waited in awe and solemn expectancy beyond fear or hope but now i became aware of a new doubleness of experience here on the frontier i was between the worlds yet i also saw the room in the house left behind i saw myself as an unconscious body reclined in a chair beside the hearth desire mitchell knelt on the floor beside me her hands grasping my arms her gaze fixed on my face her hair spilling its shining lengths across my knees philida was huddled in a chair crying

hysterically. Veer apparently had been trying to force some stimulant upon the man who was myself, yet was not myself, for while I watched, he reluctantly rose from bending above the figure and set a glass upon the table. I echoed his sigh. Life was good. The sea behind me began to rush in from immeasurable distances. The roar of the water's thunderous approach blended.

with the heat and flash of storm all about the house into which I looked. "'He dies,' Desire spoke, her voice level and calm. "'Has it not been so with all who loved the daughters of my race these two centuries past? Yet never did one of those die as he dies, not for passion but for protection of the woman, not as a madman or one ignorant, but facing that which was not. meant for man to face, his eyes beating back the intolerable eyes. Oh, glory and grief of mind to have seen this!"

Philida cowered lower in her chair, burying her face in the cushions. But Veer abruptly stood erect, his fine, dark face lifted and set, just so some ancestors of his might have risen in a bleak New England meeting-house moved powerfully to wrestle with evil in prayer. But it is doubtful if any main deacon ever addressed his deity, as Veer appealed to his. "'Almighty, where in places we don't understand?' he spoke simply as to a friend within the room, his earnest, drawling speech entirely natural. "'But you know them as you do us.

If things have got to go this way, why, we'll make out the best we can.' but if they don't and we're just blundering into trouble please save roger locke and this poor girl because we know you can amen now at this strange and beautiful prayer or so it seemed to me a ray of blinding light cleaved up from where veer stood like a shot- arrow speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space then the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out of the mist upon me. I went down in a smother of ghastly snarling floods, cold as space is cold. Something fled past me up the strand, shrieking inhuman passion. The eyes of my enemy glared briefly across my vision. One last view I glimpsed of that dread barrier amid the tumult and welter of my passing.

The breach was closed. Unbroken, majestic, the enormous wall stood up in violet. End of Chapter 20, recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 21 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram. Chapter 21.

Fancy, like the finger of a clock, runs the great circuit and is still at home. Cowper. The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair before the hearth and the living-room of the farmhouse, and the noise was the din of a tempest outside. Opposite me, Philida and Desire were clinging together, watching me with such looks of gladness and anxiety that I felt myself abashed before them.

Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp, yellow eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning and thunder, while he sleaked his recently wetted fur. Wondering where that wet had come from, I discovered presently that the fire was out, and the hearth drenched with soot-stained water. I looked toward the windows from which the curtains had been drawn aside. rain poured glistening down the panes but the clean storm was empty of horror drink some of this mr locke urged veer whose arm was about me sit quiet and i guess you'll be all right in a few moments

i took the advice strength was flowing into me as inexplicably as it had flowed away from me a while past how can i describe the certainty of love that possessed me. The assurance was established, singularly enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete and closed. Moreover, already the thing that had been our enemy, the horror that had been its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted desire, all were fading into the past. the phantoms were exercised and the house purified of fear but there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest the tumult of rain and wind linked another deeper roar within theirs the house quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over which a train is passing pulling myself together i turned to veer "'What is happening outdoors?' I asked.

"'The cloudburst was too much for the dam,' he answered regretfully. "'It went off with a noise like a big gun a while back. "'I expect the lake is flooding the whole place "'and messing up everything from our cellar to the chicken house. "'Daylight is due pretty soon now, and the storm is dying down. "'We'll be able to add up the damage after a bit.' the water came down the chimney and drowned bagheera philett had bravely tried to summon nonchalance isn't it lucky you and desire could not get started in the car after all fancy being out in that desire mitchell steadied her soft lips and gave her quarter to the shelter of commonplace speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too recently felt

it was like the tropical storms in papua where i lived until this year she said once one blew down the mission house veer's weather prediction proved quite right in an hour the storm had exhausted itself or passed away to other places sunrise came with the veritable glory of crimson and gold blazing through air washed limpidly pure by the rain the east held a troop of small clouds red as flamingos flying against a shining sky last traces of our tempest we stood on the port together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy light water overlaid lawns and paths so the house stood in a wide shallow lake whose ripples lapped around the white cement steps and the pillars of the port philida's pekin ducks floated and fed on this new waterway as contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures small objects sailed on the flood here and there bagheera's milkpan from the rear veranda bobbed amidst a fleet of apples shaken down in the orchard while some wooden garden tools nudged a silk canoe cushion in contrast to all this aquatic prospect where the real lake had been there now lay some acres of ugly oozing marsh its expanse dotted with the bodies of dead water-creatures and such a veer's young trout as had not been swept away by the outpouring flood the dam was a mere pile of debris through which trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the sparkling waterfall of yesterday already the sun's rays were drawing a rank unwholesome vapor from the long submerged surface

we contemplated the ruin for a while without words poor drawls philida sighed at length all your work just rubbed out never mind veer i exclaimed impulsively we will put it all back in the same shape as it was but even as i spoke i felt an odd shock of uneasiness and recoil from my own proposition i did not want the lake to be there again or to hear the unaccountable sounds to which it gave birth and the varying fall of the cataract over the dam did the others share my repugnance i seemed to divine that they did even the impetuous fill did not break out in welcome of my offer desire who had smoothed her sober gray dress in some feminine fashion and stood like marguerite or melisande with a great braid over either shoulder moved as if to speak then changed her intention a faint distress troubled her expression as usual veer himself quietly lifted us out of unrest i'm not sure that couldn't be bettered mr locke he demurred that is if you liked of course that marsh could be cleaned up and drained into pretty rich land i guess and down there beyond the barn on the other side of course that marsh could be cleaned up and drained into pretty rich land i guess and down there beyond the barn on the other side side where the creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I should think might be the spot for a smaller, cleaner lake. Does it seem to you, Ethan, I said, that we have progressed rather past the Mr. Locke stage?

A little later, when Desire and I were alone on the porch, we walked to the end nearest the vanished lake. Or, rather, I led her to a swinging couch there. and sat down beside her point out the path down the hill by which you used to come i asked of her she shook her head there are no words to paint how she looked in the clear morning except that she seemed its sister it is only the end of a path that matters she said look instead at the marsh do you see nothing there stranger than a path through the woods even when troddened by a wilful woman following her lifted finger i saw a series of long mounds out there in the muddy floor not far from the dam not high two or three feet at most the mounds formed in a regular square of considerable area the old house i exclaimed it was set on fire by the second desire mitchell one night deep in winter her father built this house of yours and put in the house of yours and put in the house dam that covered the ruins with water. I think he hoped to wash away the horror upon the place. I know so little of your history.

You can imagine it, she turned her head from me. The first child came back from England when it was a man grown and claimed the house and name of the first desire. He settled and married here. For two generations, only sons were born to the land. the Mitchells. I do not know if the dark one came to them. I believe it did, but they were hard, austere men who beat off evil. Then a daughter was born. She looked like the first desire, and she was not good. She was a scandal to the family. She listened to it. The tradition is that she set fire to the house after a terrible quarrel with her people, but herself perished by some miscalculation.

There were no more girls born for another while after that, not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew. and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness. Everyone who loved the desires suffered.

That is why I covered myself from you. I took her hand, so small a thing to hold and feel flutter in mine. But what of me, desire? The darkness covered no beauty in me, but a defect. You never saw me until last night, and now in the morning. Now that you know, you can bear with a man who limps?

You so perfect? She turned toward me. Her cold, dark eyes, vivid as a summer noon, open to my anxious scrutiny. But I have seen you often, she said, the heat of confession bright on cheek and lip.

I never meant you to know, but now! after the first time you spoke to me so kindly and gaily i was so very sorrowfully alone and the convent was so dull my father's field-glasses were in my trunk desire i fear i have no vocation for a nun i there is a huge rock half-way down the hill with a clear view of this place i have spent hours there watching these lawns and i-the-one i-there is a huge rock half-way down the hill with the clear view of this place i have spent hours there watching these lawns and and verandas, and the things you all did. It all seemed so amusing and, and happy. You see, where I lived there were almost no white people except my father and a priest at the Catholic mission. So I learned to know, Philida and Mr. Veer, and—' "'Then all this time, desire?'

"'The glasses brought you very close,' she whispered. "'I knew you by night and by day. End of Chapter 21. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 22 of The Thing from the Lake. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram.

Chapter 22. Life hath its term. The assembly is dispersed, and we have not described thee from the first. Galistan. i have come to the end of this narrative and with the end i come to what people of practical mind may call its explanation of the four of us who were joined in living through the events of that summer my wife and i and ethan veer agree in one belief while philida holds the opinion of her father the professor i think bagheera the cat might be added to our side also if his testimony was available. The press reports of the cloudburst and flood brought the professor up to Connecticut

to verify with his own eyes his daughter's safety. Aunt Carolyn did not come with him, but I may here set down that she did come later. They found their son-in-law by no means what their foreboding's menaced, so reconciled themselves at last to the marriage, to Philida's abiding joy. But first the little professor arrived alone, three days after the storm. Characteristically, he had sent no warning of his coming, so no one met him at the railway station. He arrived in one of those curious products of a country livery stable known as a rig, driven by a local reprobate whom no prohibition could sober. I shall never forget the incredulous rapture with which Philida welcomed him,

nor the pride with which she presented veer. The damages to the place were already being repaired, although weeks of work would be needed to restore a condition of order and to make the changes we planned. The automobile had been disentangled from the wreckage of garage and willow tree and towed away to receive expert attention. We were awaiting the arrival of the new car I had ordered for the honeymoon tour, Desire and I were going to tell.

take. Philida had declared two-week shopping, a necessary preliminary to the wedding of a bride who was to live in New York, and meet everybody. Nor would I have shortened the pretty orgy into which the two girls entered, transforming my sorceress into a lady of the hour, happiness seeming to me rather to be savored than gulped. Needless to say, there was no more talk of the convent whose iron gates were to have closed between the last desire Mitchell and the world. She had been directed there by the priest whose island mission was near her father's. In her solitude and ignorance of life, the sisterhood seemed to offer a refuge in which to keep her promise to her father.

But she had to learn the principles of the church she was about to adopt, and during that period of delay I had come to the old house. On the second day of his visit, we told all the story to the professor. We could not have told Aunt Carolyn, but we told him. It is perfectly simple, he pronounced at the end. Interesting, even unique in points, but simple of explanation. And what may be the explanation, I inquired with skepticism. Marsh gas, he replied triumphantly.

have none of you young people ever considered the singular emanations from swamps and marshes where rotting vegetation underlie shallow water philida i am astonished that you did not enlighten your companions on this point you at least have been carefully educated not in the light froth of modern music and art but in the rudiments of science i do not intend to wound your feelings roger i am not wounded sir i retorted just incredulous ah said the professor with the bland superiority of his tribe well well yet even you know something of the evils attending people who live in low swampy areas malaria ague fevers in the tropics these take the form of virulent maladies that sweep a man from earth in a few hours your lake was haunted so was the house that once stood in its basin as some vague instinct strove to warn the generations of mitchells as well as you haunted by emanations of some powerful form of marsh gas given forth more plentifully at night which lowered the heart action and impeded the breathing of one drawing the poison into his lungs through hours of sleep producing nightmare science has by no means analyzed all the possibilities of such phenomena nightmare i cried do you mean to account by nightmare for the wide and repeated experiences that twice brought me to the verge of death and desire what of her knowledge of that same nightmare what of the legend of her family so exactly coinciding with all i felt and why did not philida and ethan suffer the nightmare with me

he held up a lean hand gently gently roger consider that of all the household you alone slept in the side of the house toward the lake i know that you always have your windows open day and night a habit that used to cause great annoyance to your aunt caroline when you were a boy thus you were exposed to the full effect of the water gases that you did not feel the effects every night i attribute to different in the wind, that from some directions would blow the fumes away from the house, thus relieving you. I gather from your account that the phenomena were most produced in close, foggy weather, when the poisonous air was atmospherically held down to the earth. You have spoken of miasmic mists that hung below the level of the treetops. When Mr. Veer experienced a similar unease and depression, he was on the shore,

of the lake at dawn after precisely such a close, foggy night as I have described as most dangerous. The symptoms confirm this theory. You say you awakened on each occasion with a sense of suffocation. Your heart labored, your limbs were cold and mind unnaturally depressed, owing to slow circulation of the blood. You were a man asphyxiated. After each attack, you were a man asphyxiated. After each attack, you are more sensitive to the next, as a malaria patient grows worse if he remains in the swamp districts. It is remarkable that you did not guess the truth from the smell of decaying vegetation and stagnant damp which you admit accompanied the seizures. However, you did not. And in your condition, the last three days of continuous fog brought on two attacks that nearly proved fatal.

now as to the character of your hallucinations and their agreement with the young lady's ideas that is a trifle more involved discussion yet simple simple he put the tips of his fingers together and surveyed us with the benign condescension of one instructing a class of small children the first night that you passed in your newly purchased house roger you accidentally encountered miss Mitchell, or she did you, he smiled humorously. While your feelings were excited by the unusual episode, the strange surroundings and the dark, she related to you a wild legend of witchcraft and monsters. Later, when you suffered your first attack of marsh gas poisoning, your consequent hallucination took form from the story you had just heard. Later conversations with your mysterious lady fix the idea.

into an obsession. Recurrent dreams are a common phenomenon even in healthy persons. In this case, no doubt the exact repetition of the physical sensation of myasmic poisoning tended to reproduce in your mind the same sequence of ideas or semi-delirious imaginings. These were, of course, varied or distorted somewhat on each occasion, influenced by what you had been hearing or reading in advance. of them this mental condition became more and more confirmed as you steeped yourself more deeply in legendary lore and also pardon me in the morbid fancies of the young lady whose ghostly visits in the dark and whose increasing interest for you put a further bias upon your thoughts what were the noises i heard from the lake and the shocks we all felt i demanded he nodded amiably toward veer mr veer has mentioned the large bubbles which formed and burst on the surface of the lake that is a common manifestation of ordinary marsh gas possibly the singular and unknown emanation that took place at night came to the surface in the form of a bubble or bubbles huge enough to produce

in bursting, the smacking sound of which you speak. But I am inclined to another theory, after a walk I took about your place this morning, when you put up your cement dam, instead of the old log affair that held back only a part of the stream, you made a greater depth and bulk of water in the swamp basin than it has contained these many years, if ever. As a result, I believe the sloping mud basin began,

to slip toward the dam. Oh, very gradually, probably not stirring for weeks at a time. Just a yielding here, a parting there, until the cloudburst precipitated the disaster. You had, my dear Roger, a miniature landslide, which would account for sounds of shifting mud and water in your lake, and for the shocks or trembling of your house when the earth movements occurred. The rest of us regarded one another. I think Veer might have spoken, if he had not been unwilling to mar fill it his contentment by any appearance of dispute with her father. "'It is very cleverly worked out, sir,' I conceded. "'But how do you explain that desire knew what I experienced with the thing from the barrier,

if my experiences were merely delirious dreams?' "'I have not yet understood. stood that she did know, said the professor dryly. She put the suggestions into your head, innocently, of course. When you afterward compared notes and found they agreed, you cried, miraculous. How is that, Miss Mitchell? Did you actually know what Roger experienced in these excursions before he told you of them? Desire gazed at him with her meditative eyes, so darkly lovely, yet never quite

to lose their individual difference from any other lovely eyes I have ever seen. The eyes, I thought then and still think, of one who has seen more, or at least seen into father's spaces than most of treadmill-trotting humanity. She wore one of the new frocks, for which Philida and she had already made a flying trip to town, a most sophisticated frock from Fifth Avenue, with frivolous French shoes to correspond. Her hair of a Lorelei was demurely coiled and wound about her little head. Yet some indescribable atmosphere closed her delicately around, an impalpable wall between her and the commonplace. Even the desiccated material professor was aware of this influence

and took off his spectacles uneasily, wiped them and put them on again to contemplate her. i am not sure she answered him with careful candor i believe that i could always tell when the dark one had been with him i could feel that here she touched her breast i knew what its visits were like because i was brought up to know by my father and was told the history of the three desire mitchells my father had studied deeply and taught me i shall not tell any one all he taught me i do not want to think of those things some of them i have told to roger some of them are quite harmless and pleasant like the secret formula for making the rose of jerusalem perfume which has virtue not common, as Roger can say, who has felt it revive him from faintness. But there are places into which we should not thrust ourselves. It is like, like suicide. One's mind must be perverted before certain things can be done. And that is the true sin, to debase one's soul. All men discover and learn of science, and the universe by honest duty

and effort is good, is lofty, and leads up. Nothing is forbidden to us. But if we turn aside to the low door which only opens to crime and evil purpose, we step outside. I am unskilful. I do not express myself well. Very well, young lady, the professor condescended. Unfortunately, your theories are wild mysticism. The veritable fiend that is plagued the House of Mitchell is the mischievous habit of rearing each generation from childhood to a belief in doom and witchcraft. A child will believe anything it is told. Why not, when all things are still equally wonderful to it?

Let me point out that your theory also contradicts itself, since Roger certainly did not enter upon any path of crime, yet he met your unearthly monster. because he chose to link his fate with mine who am linked by heredity with the dweller at the frontier she said earnestly he was in the position of one who enters the lair of a wild beast to bring out a victim who was trapped there it may cost that rescuer his life roger nearly paid his life but he mastered it and took me away from it because he was not afraid and not seeking his own good i never imagined any one so brave and strong and unselfish as roger i suppose it is because he thinks of others instead of himself which gives the strongest kind of strength the thing nearly had me though i hastily intervened to spare my own modesty and it did have me worse than afraid i seem to be arguing against an impenetrable obstinacy snapped the professor do you roger who were educated under my own eye in my house have the effrontery to tell me that you believe miss mitchell is descended from the union of an evil spirit and a human being

as the eastern legends claim for saladin the great your own theory sir being i evaded there is no theory about the matter he declared excuse me miss mitchell the child was undoubtedly sir austin's son which accounts for the madness of the first desire mitchell we were all silent for a while whatever thoughts each held remained unvoiced. Come, Philida, you take my sane point of view, I hope, the professor finally challenged his daughter, with a glance of scorn and compassion at the rest of our group. You observe that I have explained every point raised, Miss Mitchell's testimony being of the vaguest?

Yes, Papa, Philida agreed hesitatingly. I do believe you have solved the whole problem, only if cousin Roger was suffering from marsh gas poisoning last night when he seemed to be dying, I do not quite see why Ethan's prayer should have cured him. The professor was momentarily posed. He looked disconcerted, took off his glasses and put them on again, and at length muttered something about stormwind dissipating the miasma in the air and events being mere coincidence.

the house was never again visited by the dark presence phantom or fancy the horror was gone as if it never had brooded about the place desire locke is a fatal companion only to my heart but whether all this is so because the lake is drained and the shetland pony of a young veer browses over the green pasture that was once a miasmic swamp or whether it is so for more subtle wilder reasons no one can say i recalling that colossal barrier i visioned as closed and a certain cleaving arrow of light must at least call the coincidence amazing as i have said my wife and i ethan veer and bagheera the cat have an understanding between us end of chapter twenty two end of the thing from the lake by eleanor m ingram Thank you.