Classic Audiobook Collection - Three More John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood ~ Full Audiobook [horror]

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Three More John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood audiobook. Genre: horror In Three More John Silence Stories, Algernon Blackwood returns to the uncanny casework of Dr. John Silence, a famed psychic physician whose practice takes him far beyond ordinary medicine. Called in when reason fails and fear takes root, Silence approaches each mystery with calm compassion, rigorous observation, and a rare sensitivity to forces most people refuse to name. Across three haunting investigations, he is drawn into strange houses and stranger landscapes, where unseen pressures distort memory, space, and even the boundaries of the self. Those who seek his help are not merely frightened - they are changed, marked by experiences that cling like a second shadow. As Silence follows subtle clues and listens for what cannot be spoken, each case becomes a test of whether the human mind can face the vastness behind everyday life without breaking. Blending occult suspense with psychological insight, Blackwood crafts stories that build dread through atmosphere and implication, asking what it costs to look directly at the unknown - and what might be waiting when you do. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (01:03:18) Chapter 02 (01:16:22) Chapter 03 (01:48:08) Chapter 04 (02:05:36) Chapter 05 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Free more John Silence Stories by Aldernon Blackwood. Chapter 1 Case 1 Secret Worship Harris, the Silk Merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from a business trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take the mountain railway from Strasbourg and run down to revisit his old school after an interval of something more than 30 years. And it was to this chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris-Burice.

brothers of St. Paul's churchyard that John Silence owed one of the most curious cases of his whole experience. For at that very moment, he happened to be tramping these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and from different points of the compass the two men were actually converging towards the same inn. Now, deep in the heart that for thirty years had been concerned chiefly with the profitable buying and selling of silk, This school had left the imprint of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps unknown to Harris, had strongly colored the whole of his subsequent existence. It belonged to the deeply religious life of a small Protestant community, which it is unnecessary to specify, and his father had sent him there at the age of 15,

partly because he would learn the German requisite for the conduct of the silk business, and partly because the discipline was strict, and discipline was what was what was. what his soul and body needed just then more than anything else. The life indeed had proved exceedingly severe, and young Harris benefited accordingly, for though corporal punishment was unknown, there was a system of mental and spiritual correction which somehow made the soul stand proudly erect to receive it, while it struck at the very root of the fault and taught the boy that his character was being cleaned and strengthened, and that he was not merely being tortured in a kind of personal revenge.

That was over thirty years ago, when he was a dreamy and impressionable youth of fifteen. And now, as the train climbed slowly up the winding mountain gorges, his mind traveled back somewhat lovingly over the intervening period, and forgotten details rose vividly again before him out of the shadows. The life there had been very wonderful, it seemed to him, in that remote mountain village, protected from the tumults of the world by the love and worship of the devout brotherhood that ministered to the needs of some hundred boys from every country in Europe. Sharply the scenes came back to him.

He smelt again the long stone corridors, the hot pinewood rooms, where the sultry hours of summer study were passed with bees droning through open windows in the sunshine, and German characters struggling in the mind with dreams of English lawns. And then suddenly, the awful cry of the master in German, Harris, stand up! You sleep! And he recalled the dreadful standing motionless for an hour, while the knees felt like wax and the head grew heavier than a cannonball. The very smell of the cooking came back to him, the daily sourcrot, the watery chocolate

on Sundays, the flavor of the stringing meat served twice a week at Mitagessen, and he smiled to think again of the half-rations that was the punishment for speaking English. The very odor of the milk bowls, the hot, sweet aroma that rose from the soaking peasant bread at the six o'clock breakfast, came back to him pungently, and he saw the huge spisal with the hundred boys in their school uniform, all eating sleepily in silence, gulping down the coarse bread and scalding milk in terror of the bell that would presently cut them short, and, at the far end where the master sat, he saw the narrow slit windows with the vistas of enticing field and forest beyond. And this, in turn, made him think of the great barn

like room on the top floor were all slept together in wooden cots, and he heard in memory the clamor of the cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings at five o'clock and summoned them to the stone-flagged washcomer, where boys and masters alike, after scanty and icy washing, dressed in complete silence. From this, his mind passed swiftly, with vivid picture thoughts, to other things, and with a passing shiver he remembered how the loneliness of never being alone had eaten into him, and how everything, work, meals, sleep, walks, leisure, was done with his division of twenty other boys and under the eyes of at least two masters.

The only solitude possible was by asking for half an hour's practice in the cell-like music rooms, and Harris smiled to himself as he recalled the zeal of his violin studies. Then, as the train puffed laboriously through the great pine forest that cover these mountains with a giant carpet of velvet, he found the pleasanter layers of memory giving up their dead, and he recalled with admiration the kindness of the masters, whom all addressed as brother, and marvelled afresh at their devotion in burying themselves for years in such a place, only to leave it, in most cases, for the still rougher life of missionaries in the wild places of the world.

He thought once more of the still religious atmosphere that hung over the little forest community like a veil, barring the distressed world. Of the picturesque ceremonies at Easter, Christmas, and New Year. Of the numerous feast days and charming little festivals, the Becha Fest, in particular, came back to him, the feast of gifts at Christmas. When the entire community paired off and gave presents, many of which had taken weeks to make or the savings of many days to purchase. And then he saw the midnight ceremony in the church at New Year with a shining face, of the predicate in the pulpit, the village preacher who, on the last night of the old year, saw in the empty gallery beyond the organ loft the faces of all who were to die in the ensuing

twelve months, and who at last recognized himself among them, and, in the very middle of his sermon, passed into a state of rapt ecstasy and burst into a torrent of praise. Thickly the memories crowded upon him. The picture of the small village dreaming its unselfish life on the mountain tops, clean, wholesome, simple, searching vigorously for its god, and training hundreds of boys in the grand way, rose up in his mind with all the power of an obsession. He felt once more the old mystical enthusiasm, deeper than the sea and more wonderful than the stars. He heard again the winds, sighing from leagues of forest over the red roofs in the moonlight. He heard the brother's voices talking of the things beyond this life, as though they had actually

experienced them in the body. And, as he sat in the jolting train, a spirit of unutterable longing passed over his seared and tired soul, stirring into the depths of him a sea of emotions that he thought had long since frozen into immobility. And the contrast pained him, the idealistic dreamer then, the man of business now, so that a spirit of unworldly peace and beauty, known only to the soul and meditation, laid its feathered finger upon his heart, moving strangely, the surface of the waters. Harris shivered a little and looked out of the window of his empty carriage. The train had long passed Hornberg, and far below the streams tumbled in white foam down the limestone rocks. In front of him, dome upon dome of wooden mountain stood against

the sky. It was October, and the air was cool and sharp. Wood smoke and damp moss exquisitely mingled in it with the subtle odors of the pines. Overhead, between the the tips of the highest furs, he saw the first stars peeping, and the sky was a clean, pale amethyst that seemed exactly the color all these memories clothed themselves with in his mind. He leaned back in his corner and sighed. He was a heavy man, and he had not known sentiment for years. He was a big man, and it took much to move him, literally and figuratively. He was a man in whom the dreams of God that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the

that gathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority, utterly died the death. He came back into this little neglected pocket of the years, where so much fine gold had collected and lain undisturbed, with all his semi-spiritual emotions a quiver, and, as he watched the mountaint the forgotten odors of his boyhood, something melted on the surface of his soul, and left him sensitive to a degree he had not known since, thirty years before, He had lived here with his dreams, his conflicts, and his useful suffering. A thrill ran through him as the train stopped with a jolt at a tiny station, and he saw the name in large black lettering on the Greystone building,

and below it the number of meters it stood above the level of the sea. The highest point on the line, he exclaimed. How well I remember it. Summerall, Summer meadow, the very next station is mine. And, as the train is the time, The train ran downhill with brakes on and steam shut off. He put his head out of the window and one by one saw the old familiar landmarks in the dusk. They stared at him like dead faces in a dream.

Queer, sharp feelings, half poignant, half sweet, stirred in his heart. There's the hot white road we walked along so often with the two Brueger always at our heels, he thought. And there, by Jove, is the turn through the forest to de Galgan. stone gallows where they hang the witches in the olden days. He smiled a little as the train slid past. And there's the cops where the lilies of the valley powdered the ground in spring, and, I swear, he put his head out with a sudden impulse.

If that's not the very clearing were Calame, the French boy, chased the swallowtail with me, and Bruder Pogel gave us half rations for leaving the road without permission, and for shouting in our mother tongues. And he laughed again as the memories came back with a rush, flooding his. his mind with vivid detail. The train stopped, and he stood on the gray gravel platform like a man in a dream. It seemed half a century since he last waited there with corded wooden boxes, and got into the train for Strasbourg and home after the two years exile. Time dropped from him like an old garment, and he felt a boy again, only. Things look so much smaller than his

memory of them. Shrunk and dwindled they look, and the distances seemed on a curiously smaller scale. he made his way across the road to the little ghost-house and as he went faces and figures of former schoolfellows german swiss italian french russian slipped out of the shadowy woods and silently accompanied him they flitted by his side raising their eyes questioningly sadly to his but their names he had forgotten some of the brothers too came with them and most of these he remembered by name bruder rost bruder pager Bruder Schieman, and the bearded face of the old preacher who had seen himself in the haunted gallery of those about to die. Bruder Geysen. The dark forest lay all about him, like a sea that at any moment might rush with velvet waves upon the scene and sweep all the faces away. The air was cool and wonderfully fragrant, but with every perfumed breath came also a pallid memory. Yet, in spite of the underlying sadness inseparable from such an experience,

It was all very interesting and held a pleasure peculiarly to its own, so that Harris engaged his room and ordered supper feeling well pleased with himself, and intending to walk up to the old school that very evening. It stood in the center of the community's village, some four miles distant through the forest, and he now recollected for the first time that this little Protestant settlement dwelt isolated in a section of the country that was otherwise Catholic. Crucifixes and shrines surrounded the clearing like the centuries of a beleaguering army. Once beyond the square of the village, with its few acres of field and orchard, the forest crowded up in solid phalanxes, and beyond the rim of trees began the country that was ruled by the priest of another faith. He vaguely remembered, too, that the Catholics had showed sometimes a certain hostility towards the little Protestant oasis that flourished so quietly and benignly in their midst.

He had quite forgotten this. How Trump were it all seemed now, with his wide experience of life and his knowledge of other countries and the great outside world. It was like stepping back, not thirty years, but three hundred. There were only two others besides himself at supper. One of them, a bearded, middle-aged man in tweeds, sat by himself at the far end, and Harris kept out of his way because he was English. He feared he might be in business, possibly even in the silk business, and that he was

perhaps talk on the subject. The other traveler, however, was a Catholic priest. He was a little man who ate his salad with a knife, yet so gently that it was almost inoffensive, and it was the sight of the cloth that recalled his memory of the old antagonism. Harris mentioned, by way of conversation, the object of his sentimental journey, and the priest looked up sharply at him with raised eyebrows and an expression of surprise and suspicion that somehow piqued him. He ascribed it to his difference of belief. Yes, went on the silk merchant, pleased to talk of what his mind was so full, and it was a curious experience for an English boy to be dropped down into a school of

a hundred foreigners. I well remember the loneliness and intolerable hemeve of it at first. His German was very fluent. The priest opposite looked up from his cold veal and potato salad and smiled. It was a nice face. He explained quietly that he did not belong here, but was making a tour of the parishes of Wirtenburg and Baden. It was a strict life, added Harris. We English, I remember, used to call it defangus-Lyman, prison life. The face of the other, for some unaccountable reason, darkened. After a slight pause and more by way of politeness than because he wished to continue the subject,

he said quietly, it was a flourishing school in those days, of course. Afterwards, I have heard. He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and the The odd look, it almost seemed a look of alarm, came back into his eyes. The sentence remained unfinished. Something in the tone of the man seemed to his listener uncalled for, in a sense reproachful, singular. Harris bridled in spite of himself. It has changed? he asked.

I can hardly believe. You have not heard then, observed the priest gently, making a gesture as though to cross himself, yet not actually completing it. You have not heard what happened there before it was abandoned? It was very childish, of course, and perhaps he was overtired and overwrought in some way, but the words and manner of the little priest seemed to him so offensive, so disproportionately offensive, that he hardly noticed the concluding sentence. He recalled the old bitterness and the old antagonism, and for a moment he almost lost his temper.

Nonsense, he interrupted with a forced laugh. Anson, you must forgive me, sir, for contradicting you, but I was a pupil there myself. I was at school there. There was no place like it. I cannot believe that anything serious could have happened to to take away its character. The devotion of the brothers would be difficult to equal anywhere. He broke off suddenly, realizing that his voice had been raised unduly, and that the man at the far end of the table might understand German. And at the same moment, he looked up and saw that this individual's eyes were fixed upon his face intently. They were peculiarly bright. Also, they were rather wonderful eyes, and the way they met his own served in some way

he could not understand to convey both a reproach and a warning. The whole face of the stranger, indeed, made a vivid impression upon him, for it was a face, he now noticed for the first time, in whose presence one would not willingly have said or done anything unworthy. Harris could not explain to himself how it was he had not become conscious sooner of its presence, but he could have bitten off his tongue for having so far forgotten himself. The little priest lapsed into silence, only once he said, looking up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to be overheard, but that evidently was overheard, you will find it different. Presently he rose and left the table with a polite bow that included both the others, and after him, from the far end rose also the figure into a tweed suit, leaving Harris by himself.

He sat on for a bit in the darkening room, sipping his coffee and smoking his 15-fenning cigar, till the girl came in to light the oil lamps. He felt vexed with himself for his laughs from good manners, yet hardly able to account for it. Most likely, he reflected, he had been annoyed because the priest had unintentionally changed the pleasant character of his dream by introducing a jarring note. Later he must seek an opportunity to make amends. At present, however, he was too impatient for his wife. walked to the school, and he took his stick and hat and passed out into the open air.

And, as he crossed before the gas-house, he noticed that the priest and the man in the tweed suit were engaged already in such deep conversation that they hardly noticed him as he passed and raised his hat. He started off briskly while remembering the way, and hoping to reach the village in time to have a word with one of the brooder. They might even ask him in for a cup of coffee. He felt sure of his welcome, and the old memories were in full possession. once more. The hour of return was a matter of no consequence whatever. It was then just after 7 o'clock, and the October evening was drawing in with chill airs from the recesses of the forest. The road plunged straight from the railway, clearing into its depths,

and in a very few minutes the trees engulfed him and the clack of his boots fell dead, and echoless against the serried stems of a million furs. It was very black. One trunk was hardly distinguishable from another. He walked smartly, swinging his holly stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant on his way to bed, and the guttural grew scot, unheard for so long, emphasized the passage of time, while yet making it seem as nothing. A fresh group of pictures crowded his mind. Again the figures of former schoolfellows flitted out of the forest and kept pace by his side, whispering the doings of long ago. One reverie stepped hard upon the heels of another. Every turn in the road, every clearing of the forest,

He knew, and each in turn brought forgotten associations to life. He enjoyed himself thoroughly. He marched on and on. There was powdered gold in the sky till the moon rose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earth and the stars. He saw the tips of the fir tree shimmer, and heard them whisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. The mountain air was indescribably sweet.

The road shone like the foam of a river through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silent thoughts across his path, and a hundred smells greeted him from the forest caverns across the years. Then, when he least expected it, the trees fell away abruptly on both sides, and he stood on the edge of the village clearing. He walked faster. There lay the familiar outlines of the houses, sheeted with silver. There stood the trees in the little central square with a fountain in small green lawns.

There loomed the shape of the church next to the Gostovter brood. and just beyond, dimly rising into the sky, he saw with a sudden thrill the mass of the huge school building, blocked castle-like with deep shadows in the moonlight, standing square and formidable to face him after the silences of more than a quarter of a century. He passed quickly down the deserted village street and stopped close beneath its shadow, staring up at the walls that had once held him prisoner for two years, two unbroken years of discipline and homesickness. Memories and emotions surged through his mind, for the most vivid sensations of his youth had

focused about this spot, and it was here he had first begun to live and learn values. Not a single footstep broke the silence, though lights glimmered here and there through cottage windows. But when he looked up at the high walls of the school, draped now in shadow, he easily imagined that well-known faces crowded to the windows to greet him, closed the windows that really reflected only moonlight and the gleam of stars. This then was the old school building, standing four-square to the world, with its shuttered windows, its lofty tiled roof, and the spiked lightning conductors pointing like black and talented fingers from the corners.

For a long time he stood and stared. Then presently, he came to himself again, and realized to his joy that a light still shone in the windows of the Bruderstube. He turned from the road and passed through the iron railings, then climbed the twelve stone steps and stood facing the black wooden door with the heavy bars of iron, a door he had once loathed and dreaded with the hatred and passion of an imprisoned soul, but now looked upon tenderly with a sort of boyish delight. Almost timorously he pulled the rope and listened with a tremor of excitement to the clanging of the bell deep within the building, and the long-forgotten sound brought the past before him with such a vivid sense of reality that he positively shivered. It was like the magic bell in the fairy tale that rolls back the

curtain of time and summons the figures from the shadows of the dead. He had never felt so sentimental in his life. It was like being young again, and, at the same time, he began to bulk rather large in his own eyes with a certain superior importance. He was a big man from the world of strife and action. In this little place of peaceful dreams would he, perhaps, not cut something of a figure? I'll try once more, he thought after a long pause, seizing the iron bell rope, and was just about to pull it when a step sounded on the stone passage within, and the huge door slowly swung open. A tall man, with a rather severe cast of countenance, stood facing him in silence. I must apologize, it is somewhat late, he began a trifle pompously, but the fact is,

I am an old pupil, I have only just arrived to, and really could not restrain myself. His German seemed not quite so fluent as usual. My interest is so great, I was here in seventy. The other opened the door wider and at once bowed him in with a smile of genuine welcome. I am Bruder Kolkmann, he said quietly in a deep voice. I myself was a master here about that time. It is a great pleasure always to welcome a former pupil. He looked at him very keenly for a few seconds, and then added,

I think, too, it is splendid of you to come, very splendid. It is a great pleasure, Harris replied, delighted with his reception. The dimly lighted corridor, with its flooring of grey stone, and the familiar sound of a German voice echoing through it, with a peculiar intonation the brothers always used in speaking, all combined to lift him bodily, as it were, into the dream atmosphere of long-forgotten days. He stepped gladly into the building, and the door shut with the familiar thunder that completed the reconstruction of the past. He almost felt the old sense of imprisonment of aching nostalgia of having lost his liberty. Harris sighed involuntarily and turned towards his host, who returned his smile faintly and then led the way down the corridor.

The boys have retired, he explained, and, as you remember, we keep earlier hours here, but, at least you will join us for a little while in the Bruder's Stude and enjoy a cup of coffee. This was precisely what the Silk Merchant had hoped, and he accepted with an alacrity that he intended to be tempered by graciousness. And tomorrow, continued the Bruder, you must come and spend the whole day with us. You may even find acquaintances, for several pupils of your day, have come back here as masters. For one brief second there passed into the man's eyes a look that made the visitor start. But it vanished as quickly as it came. It was impossible to define.

Harris convinced himself it was the effect of a shadow cast by the lamp they had just passed on the wall. He dismissed it from his mind. You are very kind, I'm sure, he said politely. It is perhaps a greater pleasure to me than you can imagine to see the place again. Ah, he stopped short opposite the door with the upper half of glass and peered in. Surely there was one of the music rooms where I used to practice the violin. Now it comes back to me after all these years.

Bruthrick Halkman stopped indulgently, smiling to allow his guest a moment's inspection. You still have the boys' orchestra? I remember I used to play his Vytegagga in it. Bruder Schleeman conducted at the piano, Dear me, I can see him now with his long black hair and... And... He stopped abruptly. Again the odd, dark look passed over the stern face of his companion.

For an instant, it seemed curiously familiar. We still keep up the pupils orchestra, he said. But Bruder Schleiman, I am sorry to say, he hesitated an instant and then added. Bruder Schleeman is dead. Indeed, indeed, said Harris quickly. I am sorry to hear it. He was conscious of a faint feeling of distress, but whether it arose from the news of his old music teacher's death or from something else, he could not quite determine.

He gazed down from the corridor that lost itself among shadows. In the street and village, everything had seemed so much smaller than he remembered, but here, inside this cool building, everything seemed so much bigger. The corridor was loftier and longer, more spacious and vast, than the mental picture he had preserved. His thoughts wandered dreamily for an instant. He glanced up and saw the face of the brooder watching him with a smile of patient indulgence. Your memories possess you, he observed gently, and the stern look passed into something

almost pitying. You are right, returned the man of silk. They do. This was the most wonderful period of my whole life, in a sense. At the time I hated it, he hesitated, not wishing to hurt the brother's feelings. According to the English ideas, it seems strict, of course. The other said persuasively, so that he went on. Yes, partly that. And partly the C-Syself. timeless nostalgia and the solitude which came from never being really alone. In English schools, the boys enjoyed peculiar freedom, you know. Bruder Cockman, he saw, was listening intently. But it produced one result I have never wholly lost, he continues self-consciously, and I'm grateful for. Oh, we soul, done. The constant inner pain threw me headlong into your religious life,

so that the whole force of my being seemed to project itself towards this search for a deeper satisfaction, a real resting place for the soul. During my two years here, I yearned for God in my boyish way, as perhaps I have never yearned for anything since. Moreover, I have never quite lost that sense of peace and inward joy which accompanied the search. I can never quite forget this school and the deep things it taught me. He paused at the end of his long speech, and a brief silence fell between them. He feared he had said too much, or expressed himself clumsily in the foreign language,

and when Bruder Kalkman laid a hand upon his shoulder, he gave a little involuntary start. So that my memories perhaps do possess me rather strongly, he said apologetically, and this long corridor, these rooms, that barred and gloomy front door, all touched cords that his German failed him, and he glanced at his companion with an explanatory smile and gesture. But the brother had removed the hand from his shoulder, and was standing with his back to him, looking down the passage. Naturally, naturally so, he said hastily without turning round. As is dulk self-vers English, we shall all understand.

Then he turned suddenly, and Harris saw that his face had turned most oddly and disagreeably sinister. It may only have been the shadows again playing their tricks with the wretched oil lamps on the wall, for the dark expression passed instantly as they retraced their steps down the corridor. But the Englishman somehow got the impression, that he had said something to give offence, something that was not quite to the other's taste. Opposite the door of the Bruderstubbe, they stopped. Harris realized that it was late, and he had possibly stayed talking too long. He made a tentative effort to leave, but his companion would not hear of it. You must have a cup of coffee with us, he said firmly as though he meant it,

and my colleagues will be delighted to see you. Some of them will remember you, perhaps. The sound of voices came pleasantly through the door, men's voices talking together. Bruder Calkman turned the handle and they entered a room ablaze with light and full of people. "'Ah, but your name?' he whispered, bending down to catch the reply. "'You have not told me your name yet.' "'Harris,' said the Englishman quickly as they went in. He felt nervous as he crossed the threshold, but described the momentary trepidation to the fact that he was breaking the strictest rule of the whole establishment, which for forbade a boy under severest penalties to come near this holy of holies where the masters took their brief leisure.

Ah, yes of course, Harris, repeated the other as though he remembered it. Come in, Herr Harris, come in, please. Your visit will be immensely appreciated. It is really very fine, very wonderful of you to have come in this way. The door closed behind them and, in the sudden light which made his sight swim for a moment, the exaggeration of the language escaped his attention. He heard the voice of Ruder Kaufman introducing him. He spoke very loud indeed, unnecessarily, absurdly loud, Harris thought. Brothers, he announced, it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce to you, Herr Harris from England. He has just arrived to make us a little visit, and I have already expressed to him

on behalf of us all the satisfaction we feel that he is here. He was, as you remember, a pupil in the year 70. It was a very formal, a very German introduction, but Harris rather liked it. It made him feel important, and he appreciated the tack that made it almost seem as though he had been expected. The black forms rose and bowed. Harris bowed. Calcman bowed.

Everyone was very polite and very courtly. The room swam with moving figures. The light dazzled him after the gloom of the corridor. There was thick cigar smoke in the atmosphere. He took the chair that was offered to him between two of the brothers, and sat down, feeling vaguely that his perceptions were not quite as keen and accurate as usual. He felt a trifle dazed, perhaps, and the spell of the past came strongly over him, confusing the immediate present and making everything dwindle oddly to the dimensions of long ago.

He seemed to pass under the mastery of a great mood that was a composite reproduction of all the moods of his forgotten boyhood. Then he pulled himself together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz around him. Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the brothers, there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room, treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very subtle delight to him. He felt that he had stepped out of the greedy, vulgar, self-seeking world, the world of silk and markets and profit-making, stepped into the cleaner atmosphere where spiritual ideals were paramount

and life was simple and devoted. It all charmed him inexpressibly so that he realized, yes, in a sense, the degradation of his 20 years absorption in business. This keen atmosphere under the stars where men thought only of their souls and of the souls of others was too rarefied for the world he was now associated with. He found himself making comparisons to his own disadvantage, comparisons with the mystical little dreamer that had stepped thirty years before from the stern peace of this devout community and the man of the world that he had since become, and the contrast made him shiver with a keen regret and something like self-contempt. He glanced around at the other faces floating towards him through a tobacco smoke, this

acrid cigar smoke he remembered so well, how keen they were, how strong, placid, touched with the nobility of great aims and unselfish purposes. At one or two he looked particularly, he hardly knew why. They rather fascinated him. There was something so very stern and uncompromising about them, and something, too, oddly, subtly familiar that just eluded him. But whenever their eyes met his own, they held undeniable welcome in them, and some held more. A kind of perplexed admiration, he thought, something that was between esteem and deference This note of respect in all the faces was very flattering to his vanity. Coffee was served presently, made by a black-haired brother who sat in the corner by the piano

and bore a marked resemblance to Bruder Schleiman, the musical director of thirty years ago. Harris exchanged bows with him when he took the cup from his white hands, which he noticed were like the hands of a woman. He lit a cigar, offered to him by his neighbor, with whom he was chatting delightfully, too, in the glare of the lighted match, reminded him sharply for a moment of Bruder Pagel, his former roommaster. "'As is virtually mefri dig,' he said,

"'how many resemblances I see, or imagine. It is really very curious.' "'Yes,' replied the other, peering at him over his coffee cup, "'the spell of the place is wonderfully strong. I can well understand that the old faces rise before your mind's eye, almost to the exclusion of ourselves, perhaps. They both laughed presently. It was soothing to find his mood understood and appreciated, and they passed on to talk of the mountain village,

its isolation, its remoteness from worldly life, its peculiar fitness for meditation and worship, and for spiritual development of a certain kind. And you're coming back in this way, Herr Harris, has pleased us all so much, joined in the brooder on his left. We esteem you for it most highly. We honor you for it. for it. Harris made a deprecating gesture. I fear, for my part, it is only a very selfish pleasure,

he said a trifle unctuously. Not all would have mad the courage, added the one who resembled Bruder Pagel. You mean, said Harris a little puzzled, the disturbing memories? Bruder Pagel looked at him steadily, with unmistakable admiration and respect. I mean that most men hold so strongly to life and can give up so little for their beliefs, he said, The anguishman felt slightly uncomfortable. These worthy men really made too much of his sentimental journey. Besides, the talk was getting a little out of his depth. He hardly followed it. The worldly life still has some charms for me, he replied smilingly, as though to indicate

that Sainthood was not yet quite within his grasp. All the more, then, must we honor you for so freely coming, said the brother on his left, so unconditionally. A pause followed, and the same Silk Merchant felt relieved when the conversation took a more general turn, although he noted that it never traveled very far from the subject of his visit and the wonderful situation of the lonely village for men who wished to develop their spiritual powers and practice the rights of a high worship. Others joined in complimenting him on his knowledge of the language, making him feel utterly at ease, yet at the same time a little uncomfortable by the excess of their admiration.

After all, it was such a very small thing to do, this sentimental journey. The time passed along quickly. The coffee was excellent, the cigar's soft and of the nutty flavor he loved. At length, fearing to outstay his welcome, he rose reluctantly to take his leave, but the others were not hear of it. It was not often a former pupil returned to visit them in this simple, unaffected way. The night was young. If necessary, they could even find him a corner in the great Schlafsimmer upstairs. He was easily persuaded to stay a little longer. Somehow, he had become the center of the little party. He felt pleased, flattered, honored. And perhaps Brer Schleeman will play something for us now. It was Kalkman speaking, and Harris started visibly when he heard the name

and saw the black-haired man by the piano turned with a smile. Raymond was the name of his old music director, who was dead. Could this be his son? They were so exactly alike. If Bruder Meyer has not put his Amati to bed, I will accompany him, said the musician suggestively, looking across at a man whom Harris had not yet noticed, and who, he now saw, was the very image of a former master of that name. Meyer rose and excused himself with a little bow, and the anguishman quickly observed that he had a peculiar gesture as though his neck had a false joint onto the body just below the collar and feared it might break. Meyer of old had this trick of movement. He remembered how the boys

used to copy it. He glanced sharply from face to face, feeling as though some silent, unseen process were changing everything about him. All the faces seemed oddly familiar. Poggle, the brother he had been talking with, was of course the image of Poggle, his former roommaster, and Culkman, he now realized for the first time, was the very twin of another master whose name he had quite forgotten, but whom he used to dislike intensely in the old days, and, through the smoke, peering at him from the corners of the room, he saw that all the brothers about him had the faces he had known and lived with long ago. Roost, Fleuheim, Minert, Regal, Geysen. He stared hard, suddenly grown more alert, and everywhere he saw, or fancied he saw, strange likenesses, ghostly

resemblances, more the identical faces of years ago. There was something queer about it all, something not quite right, something that made him feel uneasy. He shook himself, mentally and actually, blowing the smoke from before his eyes with a long breath, and as he did so, he noticed to his dismay that everyone was fixedly staring. They were watching him. This brought him to his senses. As an Englishman and a foreigner, he did not wish to be rude, or to do anything to make himself foolishly conspicuous and spoiled the harmony of the evening. He was a guest and a privileged guest at that. Besides, the music had already begun. Ruder Schliemann's long white fingers were caressing the keys to some purpose. He subsided into his chair and smoked with half-closed eyes that yet saw everything.

But the shutter had established itself in his being, and, whether he would or not, it kept repeating itself. As a town, far up some inland river, feels the pressure of the distant sea, so he became became aware that mighty forces from somewhere beyond his ken were urging themselves up against his soul in this smoky little room. He began to feel exceedingly ill at ease. And as the music filled the air, his mind began to clear. Like a lifted veil, there rose up something that had heather too obscured his vision. The words of the priest at the railway in flashed across his brain unbidden, you will find it different. And also, though why he could not tell, he saw Some mentally the strong, rather wonderful eyes of that other guest at the supper table,

the man who had overheard his conversation and had later got it into earnest talk with the priest. He took out his watch and stole a glance at it. Two hours had slipped by. It was already 11 o'clock. Schleiman, meaumal, utterly absorbed in his music, was playing a solemn measure. The piano sang marvelously. The power of a great conviction, the simplicity of great art, the vital spiritual message of a soul that had found it.

All this and more were in the chords, and yet somehow the music was what can only be described as impure, atrociously and diabolically impure. And the piece itself, although Harris did not recognize it as anything familiar, was surely the music of a mass, huge, majestic, somber? It stalked through the smoky room with slow power, like the passage of something that was mighty, yet profoundly intimate, and as it went there stirred into each and every face about him, the same thing. signature of the enormous forces of which it was the audible symbol. The countenances around him turned sinister, but not idly, negatively sinister. They grew dark with purpose. He suddenly recalled the face of Grudr Kalkman in the corridor earlier in the evening. The motives of their secret souls rose to the eyes, and mouths and foreheads, and hung there for all to see like the black vanners of an assembly of ill-start and fallen creatures. Demons was the horrible word

that flashed through his brain like a sheet of fire. When this sudden discovery leaped out upon him, for a moment he lost his self-control. Without waiting to think and weigh his extraordinary impression, he did a very foolish but a very natural thing. Feeling himself irresistibly driven by the sudden stress to some kind of action, he sprang to his feet and screamed. To his own utter amazement, he stood up and shrieked aloud. But no one stirred.

No one, apparently, took the slightest notice of his absurdly wild behavior. It was almost as if no one but himself had heard the scream at all, as though the music had drowned it and swallowed it up, as though, after all, perhaps he had not really screamed as loudly as he imagined or had not screamed at all. Then, as he glanced at the motionless, dark faces before him, something of utter cold passed into his being, touching his very soul. All emotion cooled suddenly, leaving him like a receding tide. He sat down again, ashamed, mortified, angry with himself for behaving like a fool and a boy.

And the music, meanwhile, continued to issue from the white and snake-like fingers of Bruder Shleiman, as poisoned wine might issue from the weirdly fashioned necks of antique files, and, with the rest of them, Harris drank it in. Coursing himself to believe that he had been the victim of some kind of illusory perception, he vigorously restrained his feelings. Then the music presently ceased, and everyone applauded and began to talk at once, laughing, changing seats, complimenting the player, and behaving naturally and easily as though nothing out of the way had happened.

The faces appeared normal once more. The brothers crowded round their visitor, and he joined in their talk and even heard himself thinking the gifted musician. But at the same time, he found himself edging towards the door, nearer and nearer, changing his chair when possible, and joining the groups that stood closest to the way of escape. I must thank you all for my little reception and great pleasure. The very great honor you have done me, he began in decided tones at length, but I fear I have trespassed far too long already on your hospitality.

Moreover, I have some distance to walk to my end. A chorus of voices greeted his words. They will not hear of his going, at least not without first partaking of refreshment. They produced pumpernickel from one cupboard, and rye bread and sausage from another, and all began to talk again and eat. More coffee was made, fresh cigars lighted, and Bruder Meyer took out his violin and began to tune it softly. There is always a bed upstairs if Herr Harris will accept it, said one.

And it is difficult to find the way out now, for all the doors are locked, laughed another loudly. Let us take our simple pleasures as they come, cried a third. Bruder Harris will understand how we appreciate the honor of this last visit of his. They made a dozen excuses. They all laughed as though the politeness of their words was but formal and veiled thinly, more and more thinly, a very different meaning. And the hour of midnight draws near, added Bruder Cockman with a charming smile, but in a voice that sounded to the Englishman like the grating of iron hinges. The Germans seemed to him more and more difficult to understand. He noted that they called him brooder too, classing him as one of themselves. And then suddenly he had a flash of keener perception and realized with

the creeping of his flesh that he had all along misinterpreted, grossly misinterpreted all they had been saying. They had talked about the beauty of the place, its isolation and remoteness from the world, its peculiar fitness for certain kinds of spiritual development in worship. Yet hardly he now grasped in the sense in which he had taken the words. They had meant something different. Their spiritual powers, their desire for loneliness, their passion for worship, were not the powers, the solitude, or the worship that he meant and understood. He was playing a part in some horrible masquerade. He was among men who cloak their lives with religion in order to follow their real purposes unseen of men. What did it all mean? How had he blundered into so much?

equivocal a situation. Had he blundered into it all? Had he not rather been led into it, deliberately led? His thoughts grew dreadfully confused, and his confidence in himself began to fade. And why? He suddenly thought again, were they so impressed by the mere fact of his coming to revisit his old school? What was it that they so admired and wondered at in his simple act? Why did they set such a store upon his having the courage to come, to give himself so freely, unconditionally, as one of them had expressed it with such a mockery of exaggeration. Fear stirred in his heart most horribly, and he found no answer to any of his questionings. Only one thing he now understood quite clearly it was their purpose to keep him here. They did not intend that he should go, and from this

moment he realized that they were sinister, formidable, and in some way he had yet to discover inimical to himself, inimical to his life. And the phrase one of them had done, he had, used a moment to go, this last visit of his, rose before his eyes in letters of flame. Harris was not a man of action, and had never known in all the course of his career what it meant to be in a situation of real danger. He was not necessarily a coward, though, perhaps a man of untried nerve. He realized at last, plainly, that he was in a very awkward predicament indeed, and that he had to deal with men who were utterly in earnest. What they were in the moment. What they're intentions were he only vaguely guessed. His mind, indeed, was too confused for definite

racionation, and he was only able to follow blindly the strongest instincts that moved in him. It never occurred to him that the brothers might all be mad, or that he himself might have temporarily lost his senses and be suffering under some terrible delusion. In fact, nothing occurred to him. He realized nothing, except that he meant to escape, and the quicker the better. A tremendous revulsion of feeling set in and overhauled. Overpowered him. Accordingly, without further protest for the moment, he ate his pumpernickel and drank his coffee, talking meanwhile as naturally and pleasantly as he could, and when a suitable

interval had passed, he rose to his feet and announced once more that he must now take his leave. He spoke very quietly, but very decidedly. No one hearing him could doubt that he meant what he said. He had got very close to the dwarf at this time. I regret, he said using his best German and speaking to his word. a hushroom, that our pleasant evening must come to an end, but it is now time for me to wish you all good night. And then, as no one said anything, he added, though with a trifle less assurance, and I thank you all most sincerely for your hospitality.

On the contrary, replied Culkman instantly, rising from his chair and ignoring the hand the Englishman had stretched out to him, it is we who have to thank you, and we do so, most gratefully and sincerely. And at the same moment, at least half a dozen of the brothers took up their position between himself and the door. You are very good to say so, Harris replied as firmly as he can manage, noticing this movement out of the corner of his eye. But really, I had no conception that my little chance visit could have afforded you so much pleasure. He moved another step nearer the door, but Ruder Shleiman came from across the room quickly and stood in front of him. His attitude was uncompromising. A dark and terrible expression had come into his face.

But it was not by chance that you came, Bruder Harris, he said so that all the room could hear. Surely we have not misunderstood your presence here. He raised his black eyebrows. No, no, the Englishman hastened to reply. I was, I am delighted to be here. I told you what pleasure it gave me to find myself among you. Do not understand me, I beg. His voice faltered a little, and he had difficulty in finding. the words. More and more, too, he had difficulty in understanding their words. Of course, interposed Bruder Cockman in his iron base. We have not misunderstood. You have come back in the spirit of true and unselfish devotion.

You offer yourself freely, and we all appreciate it. It is your willingness and nobility that have so completely won our veneration and respect. A faint murmur of applause ran round the room. What we all delight in, what our great master will especially delight in, is the value of your spontaneous and voluntary. He used the word Harris did not understand. He said, Ophler. The bewildered Englishman searched his brain for the translation, and searched in vain. For the life of him, he could not remember what it meant, but the word, for all his inability to translate it, touched his soul with ice. It was worse, far worse than anything he had imagined. He felt like a lost, helpless creature, and all power to fight sank out of

of him from that moment. It is magnificent to be such a willing, added Schleiman, sideling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face, he made use of the same word, Oltfer. God, what could all mean? Offer himself. True spirit of devotion, willing, unselfish, magnificent. Oltfer, Opfer, Ophur! What in the name of heaven didn't mean that strange and mysterious word that struck such terror into his heart? He made a valiant effort to keep his presence of mind, and hold his nerve steady. Turning, he saw that Kalkman's face was a dead white. Calcman! He understood that well enough. Kalkman meant man of chalk. He knew that. But what did Opfer mean? That was the real key to the situation. Words poured through his disordered mind

in an endless dream. Unusual, rare words he had perhaps heard but once in his life, while Opfer, a word in common use, entirely escaped him. What an extraordinary mockery it all was! Then, Calkman, pale as death, but his face hard as iron, spoke a few low words that he did not catch, and the brothers, standing by the walls at once, turned the lamps down so that the room became dim. In the half-light, he could only just discern their faces and movements. It is time, he heard Calkman's remorseless voice continue just behind him. The hour of midnight is at hand.

Let us prepare. He comes! He comes. Bruder, as Modilus comes, his voice rose to a chant. And the sound of that name, for some extraordinary reason, was terrible, utterly terrible, so that Harris shook from head to toe as he heard it. Its utterance filled the air like soft thunder, and a hush came over the whole room. Forces rose all about him, transforming the normal into the horrible, and the spirit of craven fear ran through all his being, ringing him to the verge of collapse. Asmodelius, As modulius, the name was appalling, for he understood at last to whom it referred, and

the meaning that lay between its great syllables. At the same instant, too, he suddenly understood the meaning of that unremembered word, the import of the word alpher flashed upon his soul like a message of depth. He thought of making a wild effort to reach the door, but the weakness of his trembling knees and the row of black figures that stood between dissuaded him at once. He would have screamed for help, but remembering the emptiness of that vast building and the loneliness of the situation, he understood that no help could come that way, and he kept his lips closed.

He stood still and did nothing, but he knew now what was coming. Two of the brothers approached and took him gently by the arm. Bruder Asmodelius accepts you, they whispered. Are you ready? Then he found his tongue and tried to speak. But what have I to do with this brother, Asmo? He stammered. a desperate rush of words crowding vainly behind the halting tongue.

The name refused to pass his lips. He could not pronounce it as they did. He could not pronounce it at all. His sense of helplessness then entered the acute stage. For this inability to speak the name produced a fresh sense of quite horrible confusion in his mind, and he became extraordinarily agitated. I came here for a friendly visit, he tried to say with a great effort, but, to his intense dismay, he heard his voice saying something quite different,

and actually making use of that very word they had all used. I came here as a willing opfer, he heard his own voice say, and I am quite ready. He was lost beyond all recall now. Not alone his mind, but the very muscles of his body had passed out of control. He felt that he was hovering on the confines of a phantom or demon world, a world in which the name they had spoken constituted the master name, the word of ultimate power. What followed he heard and saw as in a nightmare. In the half-light that veils all truth, let us prepare to worship and adore, chanted Schleiman,

who had preceded him to the end of the room. In the midst that protect our faces before the black throne, let us make ready the willing victim. I echoed Culkman in his great base. They raised their faces, listening expectantly as a roaring sound like the passage of mighty projectiles filled the air far, far away, very wonderful, very forbidding. The walls of the room trembled. He comes! He comes! He comes! he comes chanted the brothers in chorus the sound of roaring died away and an atmosphere of still and utter cold established itself over all then caulkman dark and unutterably stern turned in the dim light and faced the rest as modulius our hopped breeder is about us he cried in a voice that even while it shook was yet a voice of iron as modulius is about us make ready there followed a pause in which no one stood heard or spoke, a tall brother approached the Englishman, but Colkman held up his hand.

Let the eyes remain uncovered, he said, in honor of so freely giving himself. And to his horror, Harris then realized for the first time that his hand were already fastened to his sides. The brother retreated again silently, and in the pause that followed, all the figures about him dropped to their knees, leaving him standing alone, and as they dropped, in voices hush with mingle reverence and awe, they cried, softly, odiously, appallingly, the name of the being whom they momentarily expected to appear. Then, at the end of the room, where the windows seemed to have disappeared so that he saw the stars, there rose into view, far up against the night sky, grand and terrible, the

outline of a man. A kind of grey glory enveloped it so that it resembled a steel-cased steel. statue, immense, imposing, horrific in its distant splendor. While, at the same time, the vase was so spiritually mighty, yet so proudly, so austerely sad, that Harris felt as he stared, that the sight was more than his eyes can meet, and that in another moment the power of vision would fail him altogether, and he must sink into utter nothingness. So remote and inaccessible hung this figure that it was impossible to gauge anything as to its size. Yet at the same time, so strangely close, that when the grey radiance from its mightily broken

visage, August and mournful, beat down upon his soul, pulsing like some dark star with the powers of spiritual evil, he felt almost as though he were looking into a face, no farther removed from him in space than the face of any one of the brothers who stood by his side. And then the room failed and trembled with sounds that Harris understood full well were the failing voices of others who had preceded him in a long series down the years. There came first a plain, sharp cry, as of a man in the last anguish choking for his breath, and yet, with the very final expiration of it, breathing the name of the worship, of the dark being who rejoiced to hear it.

The cries of the strangled, the short-running gasp of the suffocated, and the smothered gurgling to the titan throat. All these and more echoed back and forth between the walls, the very wall. in which he now stood a prisoner, a sacrificial victim. The Christ, too, not alone of the broken bodies, but far worse, of beaten, broken souls. And as the ghastly chorus rose and fell, there came also the faces of the lost and unhappy creatures to whom they belonged, and, against that curtain of pale gray light, he saw float past him in the air, an array of white and piteous human countenances that seemed to beckon

and gibber at him, as though he were already one of themselves. Slowly, too, as the voices rose, and the pallid crew sailed past, that giant form of gray descended from the sky, and approached the room that contained the worshippers and their prisoner. Hands rose and sank about him in the darkness, and he felt that he was being draped in other garments than his own. A circlet of ice seemed to run about his head, while round the waist and closing the fastened arms. He felt a girdle tightly drawn. At last, about his very throat, they ran a soft and silken touch, which, better than if there had been full light and a mirror held to his face, he understood to be the chord of sacrifice and of death.

At this moment the brothers still prostrate upon the floor, began again their mournful yet impassioned chanting, and as they did so, a strange thing happened, for, apparently without moving or altering its position, the huge figure seemed, at once and suddenly, to to be inside the room, almost beside him, and to fill the space around him to the exclusion of all else. He was now beyond all ordinary sensations of fear, only a drab feeling as of death, the death of the soul, stirred in his heart. His thoughts no longer even beat vainly for escape.

The end was near, and he knew it. The dreadful chanting voices rose about him in a wave. We worship, we adore, we offer. The sounds filled his ears and hammered, almost meaningless. brain. Then the majestic gray face turned slowly downwards upon him, and his very soul passed outwards and seemed to become absorbed in the sea of those anguished eyes. At the same moment a dozen hands forced him to his knees, and in the air before him he saw the arm of colchman upraised, and he felt the pressure about his throat grow strong. It was in this awful moment,

when he had given up all hope and the help of gods or men seemed beyond question that a strange thing happened. For before his fading and terrified vision, they slid as in a dream of light, yet without apparent rhyme or reason, wholly unbidden and unexplained, the face of that other man at the supper table of the railway, and the sight, even mentally, of that strong, wholesome, vigorous English face inspired him suddenly with a new courage. It was but a flash of fading vision before he sank into a dark and terrible death, yet, in some inexplicable way, the sight of that face stirred in him unconquerable hope and the certainty of deliverance. It was a face of power, a face he now realized, of simple goodness such as might have been seen

by men of old on the shores of Galilee, a face by heaven that could conquer even the devils of outer space. And, in his despair and abandonment, he called upon it, and called with no uncertain accents. He found his voice in this overwhelming moment to some purpose. Though the words he actually used, and whether they were in German or English, he could never remember. Their effect, nevertheless, was instantaneous. The brothers understood, and that gray figure of evil understood. For a second, the confusion was terrific. There came a great shattering sound. It seemed that the very earth trembled, but all Harris remembered afterwards was that voices rose about him in the clamored of terrified alarm. A man of power is among us, a man of God!

The vast sound was repeated, the rushing through space as of huge projectiles, and he sank to the floor of the room unconscious. The entire scene had vanished, vanished like smoke over the roof of a cottage when the wind blows, and, by his side, sat down a slight un-german figure, the figure of the stranger at the inn, the man who had the rather wonderful eyes. End of chapter 1. Recording by Eduardo. Chapter 2 of three more John Silence stories by Algernon Blackwood. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eduardo.

When Harris came to himself, he felt cold. He was lying under the open sky, and the cool air of field and forest was blowing upon his face. He sat up and looked about him. The memory of the late scene was still horribly in his mind, but no vestige of it remained. No walls or ceiling enclosed him. He was no longer in a room at all. There were no lamps turned low, no cigar smoke, no black forms of sinister worshippers, no tremendous gray figure hovering beyond the windows. Open space was about him, and he was lying on a pile of bricks and mortar. His clothes soaked with dew. and the kind stars shining brightly overhead.

He was lying, bruised and shaken, among the heaped up debris of a ruined building. He stood up and stared about him. There, in the shadowy distance, lay the surrounding forest, and here, close at hand, stood the outline of the village buildings, but underfoot, beyond a question,

lay nothing but the broken heaps of stones that betokened a building long since crumbled to dust. Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and that great wooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, made lines through the general debris. He stood then, among the ruins of a burnt and shattered building, the weeds and nettles proving conclusively that it had lain thus for many years. The moon had already set behind the encircling forest, but the stars that spangled the heavens threw enough light to enable him to make quite sure of what he saw. Harris, this silk merchant, stood among these broken and burnt stones and shivered. Then he suddenly became aware that out of the gloom a figure had risen and stood beside him. Peering at him, he thought he recognized the face of the stranger at the railway inn.

Are you real? he asked in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. More than real, I'm friendly, replied the stranger. I followed you up here from the inn. harris stood and stared for several minutes without adding anything his teeth chattered the least sound made him start but the simple words in his own language and the tone in which they were uttered comforted him inconceivably your english too thank god he said inconsequently these german devils he broke off and put a hand to his eyes but what's become of them all and the room and-and The hand traveled down to his throat and moved nervously round his neck. He drew a long, long breath of relief. Did I dream everything? Everything?

He said distractedly. He stared wildly about him, and the stranger moved forward and took his arm. Come, he said soothingly, yet with a trace of command in the voice. We will move away from here. The high road, or even the woods, will be more to your taste, for we are standing now on one of the most haunted and most terribly haunted, spots of the whole world. He guided his companions stumbling footsteps over the broken masonry until they reached the path, the nettles stinging their hands, and Harris feeling his way like a man

in a dream. Passing through the twisted iron railing, they reached the path, and thence made their way to the road, shining white in the night. Once safely out of the ruins, Harris collected himself and turned to look back. But how is it possible? he exclaimed, his voice still shaking. How can it be possible? When I came in here, I saw the building in the moonlight. They opened the door. I saw the figures and heard the voices and touched, just touched their very hands, and saw their damned black faces,

saw them far more plainly than I see you now. He was deeply bewildered. The glamour was still upon his eyes with a degree of reality stronger than the reality even of normal life. Was I so utterly diluted? Then suddenly the words of the stranger, which he had only half heard or under. stood, returned to him. Haunted, he asked, looking hard at him. Haunted, did you say?

He paused in the roadway and stared into the darkness where the building of the old school had first appeared to him, but the stranger hurried him forward. We shall talk more safely farther on, he said. I followed you from the inn the moment I realized where you had gone. When I found you, it was eleven o'clock. Eleven o'clock, said Harris, remembering with his shudder, I saw you drop. I watched you, over you till you recovered consciousness of your own accord, and now. Now I am here to guide you safely back to the inn. I have broken the spell, the glamour. I owe you a great deal, sir, interrupted Harris again, beginning to understand something of the stranger's kindness, but I don't

understand it at all. His teeth still chattered, and spells of violent shivering passed over him from head to foot. He found that he was clinging to the other's arm. In this way they passed beyond the deserted and crumbling village and gained the high road that led homewards through the forest. That school building has long been in ruins, said the man at his side presently. It was burned down by order of the elders of the community at least ten years ago. The village has been uninhabited ever since, but the simulchre of certain ghastly events that took place under that roof and past days still continue, and the shelves of the chief participants still enact there the dreadful deeds that led to its self-destruction, and to the desertion of the whole settlement.

They were devil worshippers. Harris listened with beads of perspiration on his forehead that did not come, alone from their leisurely pace through the cool night. Although he had seen this man but once before in his life, and had never before exchanged so much as a word with him, he felt a degree of confidence and a subtle sense of safety and well-being in his presence that were the most healing influences he could possibly have wished after the experience he had been through. For all that, he still felt as if he were walking, in a dream, and though he heard every word that fell from his companion's lips, it was only the next day that the full import of all he said became fully clear to him. The presence

of this quiet stranger, the man with the wonderful eyes which he felt now, rather than saw, applied a soothing anodyne to his shattered spirit that healed him through and through. And this healing influence distilled from the dark figure at his side, satisfied his first imperative need, so that he almost forgot to realize how strange and opportune it was that the man should be there at all. It somehow never occurred to him to ask his name, or to feel any undue wonder that one passing Torah should take so much trouble on behalf of another. He just walked by his side, listening to his quiet words, and allowing himself to enjoy

the very wonderful experience after his recent ordeal of being helped, strengthened, blessed. Only once remembering vaguely something of his reading of years ago, he turned to the man beside him, after some more than usually remarkable words, and heard himself almost involuntarily, it seemed, putting the question, then you are a Rosicrucian, sir, perhaps? But the stranger had ignored the words, or possibly not heard them, for he continued with his talk as though unconscious of any interruption, and Harris became aware that another somewhat unusual picture had taken possession of his mind. as they walked there side by side through the cool reaches of the forest,

and that he had found his imagination suddenly charged with the childhood memory of Jacob wrestling with an angel, wrestling all night with a being of superior quality whose strength eventually became his own. It was your abrupt conversation with the priest at supper that first put me upon the track of this remarkable occurrence, he heard the man's quiet voice beside him in the darkness, and it was from him I learned after you left the story of the devil worship that became seen, secretly established in the heart of this simple and devout little community. Devil worship! Here? Harris stammered, aghast. Yes, here. Conducted secretly for years by a group of brothers before unexplained disappearances in the neighborhood led to its discovery.

For where could they have found a safer place in the whole wide world for their ghastly traffic and perverted powers than here in the very precincts, under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and holy living? Awful, awful, whispered the silk merchant, and when I tell you the words they used to me, I know it all, the stranger said quietly. I saw and heard everything. My first plan was to wait till the end and then to take steps for their destruction, but in the interest of your personal safety, he spoke with the utmost gravity and conviction. In the interest of the safety of your soul, I made my presence known when I did, and before the conclusion had been reached,

my safety! The danger then was real. They were alive, and... Words failed him. He stopped in the road and turned towards his companion, the shining of whose eyes he could jest make out in the gloom. It was a conchurched of the shells of violent men, spiritually developed but evil men, seeking after death, the death of the body, to prolong their vile and unnatural existence, and had they accomplished their object, you, in turn, at the death of your body, would have passed into their power and helped to swell their dreadful purposes. Harris made no reply. He was trying hard to concentrate his mind upon the sweet and common things of life. He even thought of silk and St. Paul's churchyard and the faces of his partners in business.

For you came all prepared to be caught, he heard the other's voice like someone talking to him from a distance. Your deeply introspective mood had already reconstructed the past so vividly, so intensely that you were en rapport at once with any forces of those days that chanced still to be lingering, and they swept you up all unresistingly. Harris tightened his hold upon the stranger's arm as he heard. At the moment he had room for one emotion only. It did not seem to him odd that this stranger should have such intimate knowledge of his mind. It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs upon surrounding scenes and objects, the other added, and whoever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed or of beautiful and lovely ghosts

revisiting the glimpses of the moon. It is unfortunate, but the wicked passions of men's hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist, the good are ever too lukewarm. The stranger sighed as he spoke, but Harris, exhausted and shaken as he was to the very core, paced by his side, only half listening. He moved as in a dream still. It was, It was very wonderful to him, this walk home under the stars in the early hours of the October morning, the peaceful forest all about them, mist rising here and there over the small clearings, and the sound of water from a hundred little invisible streams filling in the pauses of the talk. In afterlife, he always looked back to it as something magical and impossible, something that

had seemed too beautiful, too curiously beautiful, to have been quite true, and though at the time he heard and understood but a quarter of what the stranger said, it came back to him afterwards, staying with him till the end of his days, and always with a curious, haunting sense of unreality, as though he had enjoyed a wonderful dream of which he could recall only faint and exquisite portions. But the horror of the earlier experience was effectually dispelled, and when they reached the railway in, somewhere about three o'clock in the morning, Harris shook the stranger's hand gratefully, effusively, meeting the look of those rather wonderful eyes with a full heart, and went up to his room, thinking in a hazy, dreamlike way of the words with which the stranger had brought their

conversation to an end as they left the confines of the forest. And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumbled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint. But Harris, the silk merchant, slept better than might have been expected, and with a soundness that carried him halfway through the day. And when he came downstairs and learned that the stranger had already taken his departure, he realized with keen regret that he had never once thought of asking his name. Yes, he signed the visitor's book, said the girl in reply to his question, and he turned over

the blotted pages and found there, the last entry, in a very delicate and individual handwriting. John Silence, London. End of Chapter 2. Recording by Eduardo. Chapter 3 of 3 of 3 more John Silence stories by Alderon Blackwood. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eduardo. Case 2. The Camp of the Dog 1.

Islands of all shapes and sizes troop northward from Stockholm by the 100, and the little steamer that threads their intricate mazes in summer leaves the traveller in a somewhat bewildered state as regards the points of the compass when it reaches the end of its journey at waxholm but it is only after waxholm that the true islands begin so to speak to run wild and start up the coast on their tangled course of a hundred miles of deserted loveliness and it was in the very heart of this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer holiday a veritable wilderness a veritable wilderness of islands lay about us, from the mere round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous stretch of a square mile, densely wooded and bounded by precipitous cliffs, so close together often that a strip of water ran between no wider than a country lane, or again, so far that an expanse stretched like the open sea for miles. Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the majority were uninhabited, carpeted with moss and

Heather, their coastlines showed a series of ravines and clefts and little sandy bays, with a growth of splendid pine woods that came down to the water's edge and led the eye through unknown depths of shadow and mystery into the very heart of primitive forest. The particular islands to which we had camping rights by virtue of paying a nominal sum to a Stockholm merchant lay together in a picturesque group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being a mere reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and two of unlawful. others, cliff-bound monsters rising with wooded heads out of the sea. The fourth, which we selected because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for anchorage, bathing, nightlines, and whatnot,

shall have what description is necessary as the story proceeds. But, so far as paying rent was concerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of a hundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees. It was in the blaze of an evening in July, clear as crystal, the sea a cobalt blue, when we left the steamer on the borders of civilization and sailed away with maps, compasses, and provisions for the little group of dots in the scarguard that were to be our home for the next two months. The dinghy and my Canadian canoe trailed behind us with tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when the point of cliff intervened to hide the steamer and the Waxholm Hotel, we realized for the first time that the horror of trains and houses

was far behind us, the fever of men and cities, the weariness of streets and confined spaces. The wilderness opened up on all sides into endless blue reaches, and the map and compasses were so frequently called into requisition that we went astray more often than not, and progress was enchantingly slow. It took us, for instance, two whole days to find our crescent-shaped home, and the camps were made on the way were so fascinating that we left them with difficulty and regret, for For each island seemed more desirable than the one before it, and overall lay the spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the turmoil of the world, and the freedom of open and desolate

spaces. And so many of these spots of world beauty have I sought out and dwelt in, that in my mind remains only a composite memory of their faces, a true map of heaven, as it were, from which this particular one stands forth with unusual sharpness because of the strange things that happened there, and also, I think, Because anything in which John Silence played a part has a habit of fixing itself in the mind with a living and lasting quality of vividness. For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of the party. Some private case in the interior of Hungary claimed his attention, and it was not till later, the 15th of August, to be exact, that I had arranged to meet him in Berlin and then returned to London together for our harvest of winter work.

All the members of our party, however, were known to him more or less well, And on this third day as we sailed through the narrow opening into the lagoon and saw the circular ridge of trees in a gold and crimson sudden set before us. His last words to me when we parted in London for some unaccountable reason came back very sharply to my memory, and recalled the curious impression of a prophecy with which I had first heard them. Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you can, he had said as the train slipped out of Victoria, and we will meet in Berlin on the 15th, unless you should send for me. me sooner. And now suddenly the words returned to me so clearly that it seemed I almost heard his voice in my ear, unless you should send for me sooner, and returned, moreover, with a significance

I was wholly at a loss to understand that touched somewhere in the depths of my mind a vague sense of apprehension that they had all along been intended in the nature of a prophecy. In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July evening, as was only natural behind the shelter of the belt of woods, and we took to the oars, all breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our island home, yet all talking in somewhat hushed voices of the best place to land, the depths of the water, the safest place to anchor, to put up the tents in, the most sheltered spot for the campfires, and a dozen things of importance that crop up when a home in the wilderness has actually to be made. And during this busy sunset hour of unloading before the dark,

the souls of my companions adopted the trick of presenting themselves. very vividly anew before my mind, and introducing themselves afresh. In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense singular. In the conventional life at home, they certainly seemed ordinary enough, but suddenly, as we passed through these gates of the wilderness, I saw them more sharply than before, with characters stripped of the atmosphere of men and cities. A complete change of setting often furnishes a startlingly new view of people heather too held for well-known. They present another facet of their personalities. I seem to see my own party almost as new people, people I had not known properly Hither II, people who would drop all disguises and henceforth

reveal themselves as they really were. And each one seemed to say, now you will see me as I am, you will see me here in this primitive life of the wilderness without clothes, all my mask and veils I have left behind in the abodes of men. So look out for surprises. The Reverend Timothy Maloney helped me to put up the tents, long practice making the process easy, and while he drove in pegs and tightened ropes, his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without a tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was cut out for the life of a pioneer rather than the church. He was 50 years of age, muscular, blue-eyed and hardy, and he took his share of the work, and more without shirking. The way he handled the axe in cutting down saplings for the tent poles

was a delight to see, and his eye in judging the level was unfailing. Bullied as a young man into a lucrative family living, he had in turn bullied his mind into some semblance of orthodox beliefs, doing the honors of the little country church with an energy that made one think of a cold heaver tending China, and it was only in the past few years that he had resigned the living and taken instead to cramming young men for their examinations. This suited him better. It enabled him to, to indulge his passions for spells of wild life, and to spend the summer months of most years under canvas in one part of the world or another where he could take his young men with him and combine reading with open air.

His wife usually accompanied him, and there was no doubt she enjoyed the trips, for she possessed, though in less degree, the same joy of the wilderness that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The only difference was that while he regarded it as the real life, she regarded it as an interlude. While he camped out with his heart and mind, she played at camping. out with her clothes and body. Nonetheless, she made a splendid companion, and to watch her busy cooking dinner over the fire we had built among the stones was to understand that her heart was in the business for the moment, and that she was happy even with the detail. Mrs. Maloney at home, knitting in the sun and believing that the world was made in six days, was one woman,

but Mrs. Maloney, standing with bare arms over the smoke of a wooden fire under the pine trees, was another. And Peter Sangree, the Canadian people, with his pale skin, and his loose, though not ungainly figure, stood beside her in very unfavorable contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with slender white fingers that seemed better suited to hold a pen than a knife. She ordered him about like a slave, and he obeyed too, with willing pleasure, for in spite of his general appearance of debility, he was as happy to be in camp as any of them. More than any other member of the party, Joan Maloney, the daughter, was the one who seemed a natural and genuine part of the landscape, who belonged to it all dressed in the same way that

the trees and the moss and the gray rocks running out into the water belonged to it, for she was obviously in her right and natural setting, a creature of the wilds, a gypsy in her own home. To anyone with a discerning eye, this would have been more or less apparent, but to me, who known her during all the 22 years of her life and was familiar with the ins and out of her primitive utterly unmodern type it was strikingly clear to see her there made it impossible to imagine her again in civilization i lost all recollection of how she looked in a town the memory somehow evaporated this slim creature before me flitting to and fro with the grace of the

woodland life swift supple adroit on her knees blowing the fire or stirring the front of frying pan through a veil of smoke, suddenly seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. Here she was at home. In London, she became someone concealed by clothes, an artificial doll overdressed and moving by clockwork, only a portion of her alive. Here she was alive all over. I forget altogether how she was dressed, just as I forget how any particular tree was dressed, or how the markings ran on any one of the boulders that lay about the camp. She looked just as wild and natural and untamed as everything else that went to make up the scene, and more than that I cannot say. Pretty, she was decidedly not. She was thin, skinny, dark-haired,

and possessed of great physical strength in the form of endurance. She had, too, something of the force and vigorous purpose of a man, tempestuous sometimes and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzling her easy-going father with her storms of waywardness, while at the time she stirred his admiration by her violence. A pagan of the pagans she was besides, and with some haunting suggestion of old-world pagan beauty about her dark face and eyes. Altogether, an odd and difficult character, but with a generosity and high courage that made her very lovable.

In town life, she always seemed to me to feel cramped, bored, a devil in a cage, in her eyes a hunted expression as though any moment she dreaded to be caught. But up in these spacious solitudes, all this disappeared. Away from the limitations that plagued and stung her, she would show at her best, and as I watched her moving about the camp, I repeatedly found myself thinking of a wild creature that had just obtained its freedom and was crying its muscles. Peter Songri, of course, at once went down before her, but she was so obviously beyond his reach, and besides so well able to take care of herself, that I think her parents gave the

matter but little thought, and he himself worshipped at a respect to her own. full distance, keeping admirable control of his passion in all respect, save one. For at his age the eyes are difficult to master, and the yearning, almost the devouring expression, often visible in them, was probably there unknown even to himself. He, better than anyone else, understood that he had fallen in love with something most hard of attainment, something that drew him to the very edge of life, and almost beyond it. It, no doubt, was a secret and terrible joy to him, this passionate worship from afar. Only I think he suffered more than anyone guessed, and that his wants of vitality was due in large measure to the constant stream of unsatisfied yearning

that poured forever from his soul and body. Moreover, it seemed to me, who now saw them for the first time together, that there was an unnameable something, an elusive quality of some kind, that marked them as belonging to the same world, and that although the girl ignored him, she was secretly, and perhaps unknown to herself, drawn by some attribute very deep in her own nature to some equality equally deep in his. This then was the party when we first settled down into our two months' camp on the island in the Baltic Sea. Other figures flitted from time to time across the scene, and sometimes one reading man, sometimes another, came to join us and spent his four hours a day in the clergyman's tent, but they came for short periods only, and they went

without leaving much trace in my memory, and certainly they played no important part in what subsequently happened. The weather favored us that night, so that by sunset the tents were up. The boats unloaded, a store of wood collected and chopped into lengths, and the candle lanterns hung round ready for lighting on the trees. Songri too had picked deep mattresses of balsam bows for the women's beds, and had cleared little pads of brushwood from their tents to the central fireplace. All was prepared for bad ones. weather. It was a cozy supper and a well-cooked one that we sat down to and ate under the stars, and, according to the clergyman, the only meal fit to eat we had seen since we left London

a week before. The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, trains, and tourists, held something that thrilled, for as we lay round the fire, there was no sound but the faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of the waves along the shore and against the sides of the boat in the lagoon. The ghostly outline of her white sails was just visible through the trees, idly rocking to and fro in her calm anchorage, her sheets flapping gently against the mast. Beyond lay the dim blue shapes of other islands floating in the night, and from all the great spaces about us came the murmur of the sea and the soft breathing of great woods. The odors of the wilderness smells of wind and earth, of trees and water, clean, vigorous, and mighty.

were the true odors of a virgin world unspoiled by men more penetrating and more subtly intoxicating than any other perfume in the whole world oh and dangerously strong too no doubt for some natures ah breathed out the clergyman after supper with an indescribable gesture of satisfaction and relief here there is freedom and room for body and mind to turn in here one can work and rest and play here one can be alive and absorb something of the earth forces that never get within touching distance in the cities. By George, I shall make a permanent camp here, and come when it is time to die. The good man was merely giving vent to his delight at being under canvas. He said the same thing every year, and he said it often, but it more or less expressed the superficial feelings of us all. And when, a little later, he turned to compliment his wife on the fried potatoes, and discovered that she was snoring, with her back against the tree, he grunted with content at the sight and put a ground sheet over her feet, as if it were the most

natural thing in the world for her to fall asleep after dinner, and then moved back to his own corner, smoking his pipe with great satisfaction. And I, smoking mine too, lay and fought against the most delicious sleep imaginable, while my eyes wandered from the fire to the stars peeping through the branches, and then back again to the group about me. The Reverend Timothy soon let his pipe go out, and succumbed as his wife had done, for he had worked hard and eaten well. Songri, also smoking, leaned against the tree with his gaze fixed on the girl, a depth of yearning in his face that he could not hide, and that really distressed me for him. And Joan herself, with wide staring eyes, alerts, full of the new forces of the place,

evidently keyed up by the magic of finding herself among all the things her soul recognized as home, sat rigid by the fire, her thoughts roaming through the spaces, the blood stirring about her heart. She was as unconscious of the Canadian's gaze as she was that her parents both slept. She looked to me more like a tree or something that had grown out of the island than a living girl of the century. And when I spoke across to her in a whisper and suggested a tour of investigation, she started and looked up at me as though she heard a voice in her dreams. Songree leaped up and joined us. and without waking the others, we three went over the ridge of the island and made our way down to the shore behind.

The water lay like a lake before us still colored by the sunset. The air was keen and scented, wafting the smell of the wooded islands that hung about us in the darkening air. Very small waves tumbled softly on the sand. The sea was sown with stars, and everywhere breathed and pulsed the beauty of the northern summer night. I confess I speedily lost consciousness of the human presences beside me, and I have little doubt Joan did too. Only song grieve felt otherwise, I suppose, for presently we heard him sighing, and I can well imagine that he absorbed the whole wonder and passion of the sea into his aching heart, to swell the pain there that was more searching even than the pain at the sight of such

matchless and incomprehensible beauty. The splash of a fish jumping broke the spell. I wish we had the canoe now, remarked Joan. We could paddle out to the other islands. Of course, I said. Wait here and I'll go across for it, and was turning to feel my way back through the darkness when she stopped me in a voice that meant what it said. No, we will wait here and cooey to guide him.

The Canadian was often a moment, for she had only two hints of her wishes and he obeyed. Keep out from shore in case of rocks, I cried out as he went, and turned to the right of the lagoon. That's the shortest way round by the map. My voice traveled across the still waters and woke echoes in the distant islands that came back to us, like people calling out of space. It was only 30 or 40 yards over the ridge and down the other side to the lagoon where the boats lay, but it was a good mile to coast round the shore in the

dark to where we stood and waited. We heard him stumbling away among the boulders, and then the sound suddenly ceased as he topped the ridge and went down past the river. a fire on the other side. I didn't want to be left alone with him, the girl said presently in a low voice. I'm always afraid he's going to say or do something. She hesitated a moment, looking quickly over her shoulders towards the rich where he had just disappeared. Something that might lead to unpleasantness.

She stopped abruptly. You frightened, Joan? I exclaimed with genuine surprise. This is a new light on your wicked character. I thought the human being. Being who could frighten you did not exist. Then I suddenly realized she was talking seriously, looking to me for help of some kind, and at once I dropped the teasing attitude.

He's very far gone, I think, Joan, I added gravely. You must be kind to him, whatever else you may feel. He's exceedingly fond of you. I know, but I can't help it, she whispered, lest her voice should carry in the stillness. There's something about him that makes me feel creepy in half of you. afraid. But poor man, it's not his fault if he is delicate and sometimes looks like death, I laughed gently by way of defending what I felt to be a very innocent member of my sex. Oh, but it's not that I mean, she answered quickly. It's something that I feel about him,

something in his soul, something he hardly knows himself, but that may come out if we are much together. It draws me, I feel, tremendously. It stirs what is wild in me. Deep down, oh very deep down, yet at the same time makes me feel afraid. I suppose his thoughts are always playing about you, I said, but he's nice-minded and, yes, yes, she interrupted impatiently. I can trust myself absolutely with him. He's gentle and singularly pure-minded, but there's something else that she stopped again sharply to listen.

Then she came up close beside me in the darkness, whispering, You know, Mr. Hubbard, sometimes my intuitions warn me a little too strongly to be ignored. Oh, yes, you needn't tell me again that it's difficult to distinguish between fancy and intuition. I know all that. But I also know that there's something deep down in that man's soul that calls to something deep down in mine. And at present it frightens me, because I cannot make out what it is, and I know, I know he'll do something someday that will shake my life to the very bottom. She laughed a little at the strangeness of her own description. I turned to look at her more closely, but the darkness was too great to show her face.

There was an intensity, almost of suppressed passion in her voice that took me completely by surprise. Nonsense, Joan, I said a little severely. You know him well. He's been with your father for months now. But that was in London, and up here it's different. I mean, I feel that it may be different. Life in a place like this blows away the restraint of the art of the art of official life at home. I know, oh, I know what I'm saying. I feel all in tide in a place like this. The rigidity of once nature begins to melt and flow. Surely you must understand what I mean.

Of course I understand, I replied, yet not wishing to encourage her in her present line of thought. And it's a grand experience for a short time. But you're overtired tonight, Joan, like the rest of us. A few days in this air will set you above all fears of the kind you mention. Then, after a moment's silence, I added, feeling I should estrange her confidence altogether if I blundered any more and treated her like a child. I think, perhaps, the true explanation is that you pity him for loving you, and at the same time you feel the repulsion of the healthy, vigorous animal for what is weak and timid. If he came up boldly and took you by the throat and shouted that he would force you to love

him, well, then you would feel no fear at all. You would know exactly how to deal with him. Isn't it perhaps something of that kind? The girl made no reply, and when I took her hand, I felt that it trembled a little and was cold. It's not his love that I'm afraid of, she said hurriedly, for at this moment we heard the dip of a paddle in the water. It's something in his very soul that terrifies me in a way I have never been terrified before. Yet fascinates me. In town I was hardly conscious of his presence, but the moment we got away from civilization, it began to come.

He seems so, so real up here. I dread being alone with him. It makes me feel that something must burst and tear its way out, that he would do something, or I should do something. I don't know exactly what I mean, probably, but that I should let myself go and scream. Joan! Don't be alarmed, she laughed shortly.

I can't do anything silly, but I wanted to tell you my feelings in case I needed your help. When I have intuitions as strong as this, they are never wrong, only I don't know yet what it means exactly. You must hold out for the month at any rate, I said, in as matter of fact, a voice as I could manage, for her manner had somehow changed my surprise to a subtle sense of alarm. Songri only stays the month, you know.

And anyhow, you're such an odd creature yourself that you should feel generously towards other odd creatures. I ended lamely with a forced laugh. She gave my hand a sudden pressure. I'm glad I've told you at any rate, she said quickly under her breath, for the canoe was now gliding up silently like a ghost to our feet, and I'm glad you're here too, she added as we moved down towards the water to meet it. I made song grudge charge into the bows and got into the steering seat myself,

putting the girl between us so that I could watch them both by keeping their outlines against the sea and stars. For the intuitions of certain folk, women and children usually, I confess, I have always felt a great respect that has more often than not been justified by experience, and now the curious emotions stirred in me by the girl's words remained somewhat vividly in my consciousness. I explained it in some measure by the fact that the girl, tired out by the fatigue of many days' travel, had suffered a vigorous reaction of some kind from the strong, desolate scenery, and further, perhaps, that she had been treated to my own experience of seeing the members of the party in a loon light, the Canadian, being partly a stranger, more vividly than the rest of us.

But at the same time, I felt it was quite possible that she had sensed some subtle link between his personality and her own, some quality that she had hither too ignored, and that the routine of town life had kept buried out of sight. The only thing that seemed difficult to explain was the fear she had spoken of, and this, I hoped, the wholesome effects of camp life and exercise would sweep away naturally in the course of time. We made the tour of the island without speaking. It was all too beautiful for speech.

The trees crowded down to the shore to hear us pass. We saw their fine, dark heads, bowed low with splendid dignity to watch us, forgetting for a moment that the stars were caught in the needleed network of their hair. Against the sky in the west, where still lingered the sunset gold, we saw the wild toss of the horizon, shaggy with forest and cliff, gripping the heart like the motive in his symphony, and sending the sense of beauty all a shiver through the mind. All these surrounding islands standing above the water like low clouds, and like them seeming to post along silently into the engulfing night.

We heard the musical drip-drip of the paddle, and the little wash of our waves on the shore, and then suddenly we found ourselves at the opening of the lagoon again, having made the complete circuit of our home. The Reverend Timothy had awakened from sleep and was singing to himself, and the sound of his voice as we glided down the 50 yards of enclosed water was pleasant to hear, and undeniably wholesome. We saw the glow of the fire up among the trees on the ridge, and his shadow moving about as he threw on more wood. There you are, he called about, Good again, been setting the night lines, eh? Capital, and your mother's still fast asleep, Joan. His cheery laugh floated across the water. He had not been in the least disturbed by our presence, for old campers are not easily alarmed. Now remember, he went on after we had told our little tale of travel by the fire, and Mrs. Maloney had asked for the fourth time exactly

where her tent was and whether the door faced east or south. Everyone takes their turn at cooking breakfast, and one of the men is always out at sunrise to catch it first. Hubbard, I'll toss you which you do in the morning, in which I do. He lost the toss. Then I'll catch it, I said, laughing at his discomfiture, for I knew he loathed stirring porridge. And mind you, don't burn it as you did every blessed time last year on the Volga, I added by way of reminder. Mrs. Maloney's fifth interruption about the door of her tent, and her further pointed observation that it was past nine o'clock, set a sliding lanterns and putting the fire out for safety. But before we separated for the night, the clergyman had a time-honoured little ritual of his own

to go through that no one had the heart to deny him. He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit habits. He glanced briefly from one to the other of us. his face grave and earnest, his hands lifted to the stars, and his eyes all closed and puckered up beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a short, almost inaudible prayer, thanking heaven for our safe arrival, begging for good weather, no illness or accidents, plenty of fish, and strong sailing winds. And then, unexpectedly, no one knew why exactly, he ended up with an abrupt request that nothing from the kingdom of darkness should be allowed to afflict our peace, and no evil thing come near to disturb us in the night-time.

And while he uttered these last surprising words, so strangely unlike his usual ending, a chance that I looked up and let my eyes wander round the group assembled about the dying fire. And it certainly seemed to me that Songri's face underwent a sudden, invisible alteration. He was staring at Joan, and as he stared the change ran over it like a shadow and was gone. i started in spite of myself for something oddly concentrated potent collected had come into the expression usually so scattered and feeble but it was all swift as a passing meteor and when i looked a second time his face was normal and he was looking among the trees And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head being bowed and her eyes tightly closed while her father prayed. The girl has a vivid imagination indeed, I thought, half laughing as I lit the lanterns, if

her thoughts can put a glamour upon mine in this way. And yet somehow when we said good night, I took the occasion to give her a few vigorous words of encouragement and went to her tent to make sure I could find it quickly in the night in case anything happened. In her quick way the girl understood and thanked me, and the last thing I heard as I moved off to the men's quarters was Mrs. Maloney crying that there were beetles in her tent, and Jones laughed her as she went to help her turn them out. Half an hour later the island was silent as the grave, but for the mournful voices of the wind

as it sighed up from the sea. Like white sentries stood the three tents of the men on one side of the ridge, and on the other side, half hidden by some birches, whose leaves just shivered as the breeze caught them, the women's tents, patches of ghostly gray, gathered more closely together for mutual shelter and protection. Something like fifty yards of broken ground, gray rock, moss and lichen, lay between, and overall lay the curtain of the night and the great whispering winds from the forest of Scandinavia. And the very last thing, just before floating away on that mighty wave that carries one so softly into the deeps of the forgetfulness, I again heard the voice

of John's silence as the train moved out of Victoria Station. and by some subtle connection that meant me on the very threshold of consciousness, there arose in my mind simultaneously the memory of the girls half-given confidence and of her distress. As by some wizardry of approaching dreams, they seemed in that instant to be related, but before I could analyze the why and the wherefore both sank away out of sight again, and I was off beyond recall. Unless you should send for me sooner. End of chapter 3.

Recording by Eduardo. Chapter 4 of Three More John's Silence Stories by Alderman Blackwood. Recording by Eduardo Whether Mrs. Maloney's tent door opened south or east, I think she never discovered, for it is quite certain she always slept with the flap tightly fastened. I only know that my own little, five by seven, all silk, face due east, because next morning the sun, pouring in as only the wilderness sun knows how to pour, woke me early, and a moment later, with a short run over soft moss and a flying dive from the granite ledge, I was swimming in the

most sparkling water imaginable. It was barely four o'clock, and the sun came down a long vista of blue islands that led out to the open sea and Finland. Nearby rose the wooded domes of our own property, still capped and wreathed with smoky trails of fast-melting mist, and looking as fresh as though it was the morning of Mrs. Maloney's six day, and they had just issued, clean and brilliant, from the hands of the great architect. In the open spaces the ground was drenched with dew, and from the sea a cool saltwind stole in among the trees and set the branches trembling in an atmosphere of shimmering silver. The tents shone white where the sun caught them in patches.

Below lay the lagoon, still dreaming of the summer night. In the open, the fish were jumping busily, sending musical ripples towards the shore, and in the air hung the magic of dawn, silent. incommunicable. I lit the fire so that an hour later the clergyman should find good ashes to stir his porridge over and then set forth upon an examination of the island, but hardly had I gone a dozen yards when I saw a figure standing a little in front of me where the sunlight fell in a pool among the trees. It was Joan. She had already been up an hour, she told me, and had bathed before the last stars had left the sky. I saw at once that the new spirit of this solitary region had entered into her,

banishing the fears of the night, for her face was like the face of a happy denizen of the wilderness, and her eyes stainless and shining. Her feet were bare, and drops of dew she had shaken from the branches hung in her loose flying hair. Obviously she had come into her own. I've been all over the island, she announced laughingly, and there are two things wanting. You're a good judge, Joan. What are they? There's no animal life, and there's no water. They go together. I said. Animals don't bother with a rock like this unless there's a spring on it. And that she led me from place to place, happy and excited,

leaping adroitly from rock to rock, I was glad to note that my first impressions were correct. She made no reference to our conversation of the night before. The new spirit had driven out the old. There was no room in her heart for fear or anxiety, and nature had everything her own way. The island, we found, was some three-quarters of a mile from point to point, built in a circle or white horseshoe with an opening of 20 feet at the mouth of the lagoon. Pine trees grew thickly all over, but here and there were patches of silver birch, scrub oak,

and considerable colonies of wild raspberry and gooseberry bushes. The two ends of the horseshoe formed bare slabs of smooth granite running into the sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface. But the rest of the island rose in a 40-foot ridge and sloped down steeply to the sea on either side, being nowhere more than a hundred yards wide. The outer shoreline was much indented with numberless coves and bays and sandy beaches, with here and there caves and precipitous little cliffs against which the sea broke in spray and thunder. But the inner shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular,

and so well protected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could ever send more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges. Eternal shelter reigned there. On one of the other islands, a few hundred yards away, for the rest of the party slept late this first morning and we took to the canoe, we discovered a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish flavor of the Baltic, and having thus solved the most important problem of the camp, we next proceeded to deal with the second, fish, and in half an hour we reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means of storage, and to clean more fish than may be stored

or eaten in a day is no wise occupation for experienced campers. And as we landed towards six o'clock, we heard the clergyman singing as usual, and saw his wife and Songri shaking out their blankets in the sun, and dressed in a fashion that finally dispelled all memories of streets and civilization. The little people lit the fire for me, cried Maloney looking natural and at home in his ancient flannel suit and breaking off in the middle of his singing, so I've got the porridge going, and this time it's not burnt. We report. ordered the discovery of water and held up the fish. Good, good again, he cried.

We'll have the first decent breakfast we've had this year. Songreel cleaned them in no time, and the bosun's mate will fry them to a turn, laughed the voice of Mrs. Maloney, appearing on the scene in a tight blue jersey in sandals and catching up the frying pan. Her husband always called her the bosun's mate in camp, because it was her duty, among others, to pipe all hands to meals. And as for you, Joan, went on the happy man. you look like the spirit of the island, with moss in your hair and wind in your eyes,

and sun and stars mixed in your face. He looked at her with delighted admiration. Here, Songri, take these twelve, there's a good fellow, they're the biggest, and we'll have it in butter in less time than you can say Baltic Island. I watched the Canadian as he slowly moved off to the cleaning pail. His eyes were drinking in the girl's beauty, and a wave of passionate, almost feverish joy passed over his face, expressive of the ecstasy of true worship more than anything else.

Perhaps he was thinking that he still had three weeks to come with that vision always before his eyes. Perhaps he was thinking of his dreams in the night, I cannot say. But I noticed the curious mingling of yearning and happiness in his eyes, and the strength of the impression touched my curiosity. Something in his face held my gaze for a second, something to do with its intensity. That so timid, so gentle a personality should conceal so virile a passion almost seemed to require explanation. But the impression was momentary, for that first

breakfast in camp permitted no divided attentions, and I dare swear that the porridge, the tea, the Swedish flatbread, and the fried fish flavored with points of frizzled bacon, were better than any meal eaten elsewhere that day in the whole world. The first clear day in a new camp is always a furiously busy one, and we soon dropped into the routine upon which, in large measure, the real comfort of everyone depends. About the co-cure of the co-court of everyone depends. About the Ficking fire, greatly improved with stones from the shore, we built a high stockade consisting of upright poles, thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with moss and lichen and weighted with rocks, and round the interior we made low wooden seats so that we could lie round

the fire even in rain and eat our meals in peace. Pilots too outlined themselves from tent to tent, from the bathing places and the landing stage, and a fair division of the island was decided upon between the quarters of the men and the women. It was stacked, awkward trees and boulders removed, hammocks slung, and tents strengthened. In a word, camp was established, and duties were assigned and accepted as though we expected to live on this Baltic island for years to come, and the smallest detail of the community life was important. Moreover, as the camp came into being, this sense of a community developed, proving that

we were a definite whole and not merely separate human beings living for a while in tents upon a desert island. fell willingly into the routine. Songri, as by natural selection, took upon himself the cleaning of the fish and the cutting of the wood into length sufficient for a day's use, and he did it well. The pan of water was never without a fish, cleaned and scaled, ready to fry for whoever was hungry. The nightly fire never died down for lack of material to throw on without going farther of field to search. And Timothy, once reverend, caught the fish and chopped down the trees. He also assumed responsibility for the condition of the boat, and did it so thoroughly that

nothing in the little cutter was ever found wanting. And when, for any reason, his presence was in demand, the first place to look for him was, in the boat, and there too he was usually found, tinkering away with sheets, sails, or rudder and singing as he tinkered. Nor was the reading neglected. For most mornings there came a sound of droning voices from the white tent by the raspberry bushes, which signified that Songri, the tutor, and whatever other man chanced to be in the party at the time, were hard at it with history or the classics. And while Mrs. Maloney,

also by natural selection, took charge of the larder and the kitchen, the mending and general supervision of the rough comforts, she also made herself peculiarly mistress of the megaphone, which summoned to meals and carried her voice easily from one end of the island to the other. And in her hours of leisure, she daubed the surrounding scenery on to a sketching block with all the honesty and devotion of her determined but unreceptive soul. Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the wilds, became I know not exactly what. She did plenty of work in the camp, yet seemed to have no very precise duties. She was everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes she slept in her tent, sometimes under the stars with a blanket.

She knew every inch of the island and kept turning up in places where she was least expected, forever wandering about, reading her books in sheltered corners, making little fires on sunless days to worship by to the gods, as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive and bathe in, and swimming day and night in the warm and waveless lagoon like a fish in a huge tank. She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her hair down and her skirts caught up to the knees, and if ever a human being turned into a jolly savage within the compass of a single week, Joan Maloney was certainly that human being. She ran wild.

So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong spirit of the place that the little human fear she had yielded to so strangely on our arrival seemed to have been utterly dispossessed. As I hoped and expected, she made no reference to our conversation of the first evening. Songri bothered her with no special attention, and after all they were very little together. His behavior was perfect in that respect, and I, for my part, hardly gave the matter another thought. Joan was ever a prey to vivid fancies of one kind or another, and this was one of them. Mercifully for the happiness of all concerned, it had melted away before the spirit of busy, active life, and deep content that reigned over the island.

Everyone was intensely alive, and peace was upon all. Meanwhile, the effect of the camp life began to tell. Always a searching test of character, its results, sooner or later, are infallible, for it acts upon the soul as swiftly and surely as the hypobath upon the negative of a photograph. A readjustment of the personal forces takes place quickly. Some parts of the personality go to sleep. Others wake up. But the first sweeping change that the primitive life brings about

is that the artificial portions of the character shed themselves one after another like dead skins. Attitudes and poses that seem genuine in the city drop away. The mind, like the body, grows quickly hard, simple, uncomfortable. And in a camp as primitive and close to nature as ours was, these effects became speedily visible. Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the simple life when it is safely out of reach, betray themselves in camp by forever peering about for the artificial excitements of civilization which they miss. Some get bored at once, some grow slovenly, some reveal the animal in most unexpected fashions, and some, the select few, find themselves in very short order and are happy.

And in our little party, we could flatter ourselves that we all belonged to the last category, so far as the general effect was concerned. Only there was certain other changes as well, varying with each individual, and all interesting to note. It was only after the first week or two that these changes became marked, although this is the proper place, I think, to speak of them. For having myself no other duty than to enjoy a well-earned holiday, I used to load my canoe with blankets and provisions and journeying forth on exploration trips among the islands of

several days together. And it was on my return from the first of these, when I rediscovered the party, so to speak, that these changes first presented themselves vividly to me, and in one particular instance produced a rather curious impression. In a word then, while everyone had grown wilder, naturally wilder, songri, it seemed to me, had grown much wilder, and what I can only call a naturally wilder, he made me think of a savage. To begin with, he had changed immensely in mere physical appearance, and he had changed immensely

and the full-brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and the general air of vigor and robustness that had come to replace his customary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that I hardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper, and his manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in himself. He now had some claims to be called nice-looking, or at least to a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyes of the opposite sex. All this, of course, was natural enough, and most welcome. But, altogether from this physical change, which no doubt had also been going forward in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in his personality that came to me with a degree of surprise that almost

amounted to shock. And two things. As he came down to welcome me and pull up the canoe, leaped up in my mind unbidden, as though connected in some way I could not at the moment divine, first the curious judgment formed of him by Joan, and secondly, that fugitive expression I had caught in his face while Maloney was offering up his strange pair for special protection from heaven. The delicacy of manner and feature, to call it by no milder term, which had always been a

distinguishing characteristic of the man, had been replaced by something far more vigorous and decided that yet utterly eluded analysis. The change which impressed me so oddly was not easy to name. The others, singing Maloney, the bustling bosun's mate, and Joan, that fascinating half-breed of undine and salamander, all showed the effects of a life so close to nature. But in their case, the change was perfectly natural and what was to be expected, whereas with Peter Songri, the Canadian, it was something unusual and unexpected. It is impossible to explain how he managed gradually to convey to my mind the impression

that something in him had turned savage, yet this, more or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was not that he seemed really less civilized, or that his character had undergone any definite alteration, but rather that something in him, Hyther too dormant, had awakened to life. Some quality latent till now, so far as least as we were concerned, who, after all knew him but slightly, had stirred it into activity and risen to the surface of his being. And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as I could get, it was but natural that my mind should continue the intuitive process and acknowledge that John Silence, owing to his peculiar

your faculties, and the girl, owing to her singularly receptive temperament, might each in a different way have divined this latent quality in his soul and feared its manifestation later. On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it now seems equally natural that the same process carried to its logical conclusion should have wakened some deep instinct in me that, wholly without direction from my will, set itself sharply and persistently upon the watch from that very moment. Thenceforward, the personality of Sondry was never far from my thought, and I was forever analyzing and searching for the explanation that took so long in coming. I declare, Hubbard, you're tanned like an averageinal, and you look like one too, laughed

Maloney. And I can return the compliment, was my reply, as we all gathered round a brew of tea to exchange news and compare notes. And later, at supper, it amused me to observe that the distinguished tutor, once clergyman, did not eat his food quite as nicely as he did at home. He devoured it, that Mrs. Maloney ate more than that. more, and, to say the least, with less delay than was her custom in the select atmosphere of her English dining-room, and that while Joan attacked her tin plaitful with genuine avidity,

Sangri, the Canadian, bit and nod at his, laughing and talking and complimenting the cook all the while, and making me think with secret amusement of a starved animal at its first meal, while, from the remarks about myself, I judged that I had changed and grown wild as much as the rest of them. In this and in a hundred other little ways, the change showed, ways difficult to define in detail, but all proving, not the coarsening effect of leading the primitive life, but, let us say, the more direct and unvarnished methods that became prevalent. For all day long, we were in the bath of the elements, wind, water, sun, and just as the body became insensible to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind grew straightforward and shed many of the

disguises required by the conventions of civilization. And in each, according to temperament and character, there stirred the life instincts that were natural, untamed, and, in a sense, savage. End of chapter four. Recording by Eduardo. Chapter 5 of three more John Silent Stories. This is a Librevox recording. All Liebervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, here, please visit Libavox.org, read by Alan Lord. Three more John Silence Stories by Algernonon Blackwood. Chapter 5, Case 3, A Victim of Higher Space

There's a extraordinary gentleman to see you, sir, said the new man. Why extraordinary? asked Dr. Silence, drawing the tips of his thin fingers through his brown beard. His eyes twinkled pleasantly. Why extraordinary, Barker? He repeated encouragingly, noticing the perplexed expression in the man's eyes.

He's so, so thin, sir. I could hardly seem at all, at first. He was inside the house before I could ask the name, he added, remembering strict orders. And who brought him here? He come alone, sir, in a closed cab.

He pushed by me before I could say a word, making no noise, not what I could hear. He seemed to move so soft-like. The man stopped short, with obvious embarrassment, as though he had already said enough to jeopardy, his new situation, but trying hard to show that he remembered the instructions and warnings he had received with regard to the admission of strangers not properly accredited. And where is the gentleman now? asked Dr. Silence, turning away to conceal his amusement.

I really couldn't exactly say, sir. I left him standing in the hall. The doctor looked up sharply. But why in the hall, Barker? Why not in the waiting room? He fixed his piercing, though kindly eyes, on the man's face. Did he frighten you? He asked quickly. I think he did, sir.

If I may say so, I seem to lose sight of him, as it were. The man stammered. evidently convinced by now that he had earned his dismissal. He come in so funny, just like a cold wind! He added boldly, setting his heels at attention and looking his master full in the face. The doctor made an internal note of the man's halting description.

He was pleased that the slight signs of psychic intuition, which had induced him to engage, Barker, had not entirely failed at the first trial. Dr. Silence sought for this qualification in all his assistance, from secretary to serving man. And if it surrounded him with a somewhat singular crew, the drawbacks were more than compensated for on the whole by their occasional flashes of insight.

So the gentleman made you feel queer, did he? That was it. I think, sir, repeated the man stolidly. And he brings no kind of introduction to me, no letter or anything? asked the doctor, with feigned surprise, as though he knew what was coming. The man fumbled, both in mind and pockets,

and finally produced an envelope. I beg pardon, sir, he said greatly flustered. the gentleman handed me this for you. It was a note from a discerning friend who had never yet sent him a case that was not vitally interesting from one point or another. Please see the bearer of this note,

the brief message ran, though I doubt if even you can do much to help him. John Silence paused a moment so as to gather from the mind of the writer all that lay behind the brief words of the letter. Then he looked up at his servant with a graver expression than he had yet worn. Go back and find this gentleman, he said,

and show him into the green study. Do not reply to his question or speak more than actually necessary, but think kind, helpful, sympathetic thoughts as strongly as you can, Barker. You remember, what I told you about the importance of thinking when I engaged you. Put curiosity out of your mind and think gently, sympathetically, affectionately, if you can. He smiled, and Barker, who had

recovered his composure in the doctor's presence, bowed silently and went out. There were two different reception rooms in Dr. Silence's house. One, intended for persons who imagined they needed spiritual assistance, when really they were only candidates for the asylum, had padded walls, and was well supplied with various concealed contrivances by means of which sudden violence could be instantly met and overcome. It was, however, rarely used. The other, intended for the reception of genuine cases of spiritual distress and out-of-the-way afflictions of a psychic nature, was entirely draped and furnished in a soothing, deep green,

calculated to induce calmness and repose of mind. And this room was the one in which Dr. Silence interviewed the majority of his queer cases, and the one into which he had directed. Barker to show his present caller. To begin with, the armchair in which the patient was always directed to sit was nailed to the floor. Since its immovability tended to impart this same excellent characteristic to the occupant. Patients invariably grew excited when talking about themselves and their excitement tended to confuse their thoughts and to exaggerate their language.

The inflexibility of the chair helped to counteract this. After repeated endeavours to drag it forward or push it back, they ended by resigning themselves to sitting quietly. And with the futility of fidgeting, there followed a calmer state of mind. Upon the floor and at intervals in the wall immediately behind were certain tiny green buttons. practically unnoticeable, which on being pressed permitted a soothing and persuasive narcotic

to rise invisibly about the occupant of the chair. The effect upon the excitable patient was rapid, admirable and harmless. The Green Study was further provided with a secret spyhole, for John's silence liked, when possible, to observe his patient's face before it had assumed that mask the features of the human countenance invariably wear in the presence of another person.

A man sitting alone wears a psychic expression and this expression is the man himself. It disappears the moment another person joins him and Dr. Silence often learned more from a few moments secret observation of a face

than from hours of conversant. with its owner afterwards. A very light, almost a dancing step, followed Barker's heavy tread towards the green room. And a moment afterwards, the man came in and announced that the gentleman was waiting. He was still pale and his manner nervous. Never mind, Barker, the doctor said kindly, if you were not psychic, the man would have had no effect upon you at all. You only need training and development, and when you have learned to interpret these feelings and sensations better, you will feel no fear, but only a great sympathy. Yes, sir, thank you, sir. And Barker bowed, and made his escape, while Dr. Silence,

an amused smile lurking about the corners of his mouth, made his way noiselessly down the passage, and put his eye to the spyhole in the door of the Green Study. This spy hole was so placed that it commanded a view of almost the entire room, and, looking through it, the doctor saw a hat, gloves and umbrella, lying on a chair by the table. but searched at first in vain for their owner. The windows were both closed and the brisk fire burned in the grate.

There were various signs, signs intelligible at least to a keenly intuitive soul that the room was occupied. Yet so far as human beings were concerned, it was empty, utterly empty. No one sat in the chairs, no one stood on the mat before the fire. There was no sign even that a patient was anywhere close against the wall, examining the bocklin reproductions, as patients so often did when they thought they

were alone, and therefore rather difficult to see from the spy hole. Ordinarily speaking, there was no one in the room. It was undeniable. Yet Dr. Silence was quite well aware, that a human being was in the room. His psychic apparatus never failed in letting him know the proximity of an incarnate or discarnate being. Even in the dark, he could tell that. And he now knew positively

that his patient, the patient who had alarmed Barker and had then tripped down the corridor with that dancing footstep, was somewhere concealed within the four walls commanded by his spy hole. He also realised, and this was most unusual, that this individual whom he desired to watch, knew that he was being watched,

and further, that the stranger himself was also watching. In fact, that it was he, the doctor, who was being observed, and by an observer as keen and trained, as himself. An inkling of the true state of the case began to dawn upon him, and he was on the verge of entering. Indeed, his hand already touched the doorknob, when his eye still glued to the spyhole, detected a slight movement. Directly opposite, between him and the fireplace, something stirred. He watched very attentively and made certain that he was not mistaken.

An object on the mantelpiece, it was a blue vase, disappeared from view. It passed out of sight together with the portion of the marble mantelpiece on which it rested. Next, that part of the fire and grate and brass fender immediately below it vanished entirely. as though a slice had been taken clean out of them. Dr. Silence then understood that something between him and these objects was slowly coming into being, something that concealed them and obstructed his vision

by inserting itself in the line of sight between them and himself. He quietly awaited further results before going in. First, he saw a little bit of sight. a thin perpendicular line tracing itself from just above the height of the clock and continuing downwards till it reached the bully fire mat. This line grew wider, broadened, grew solid. It was no shadow, it was something substantial. It defined itself more and more.

Then suddenly, at the top of the line and about on a level with the face of the clock, he saw a round luminous disc gazing steadily at him. It was a human eye, looking straight into his own, pressed there against spy-hole, and it was bright with intelligence. Dr. Silence held his breath for a moment and stared back at it. Then, like someone moving out of deep shadow into light, He saw the figure of a man come sliding sideways into view, a whitish face following the eye, and the perpendicular line he had first observed broadening out and developing into the complete figure of a human being.

It was the patient. He had apparently been standing there in front of the fire all the time. A second eye had followed the first, and both of them stared steadily at the same. the spy hole, sharply concentrated, yet with a sly twinkle of humour and amusement that made it impossible for the doctor to maintain his position any longer. He opened the door and went in quickly. As he did so, he noticed for the first time the sound of a German band coming in gaily through the open ventilators. In some intuitive, unaccountable fashion, The music connected itself with the patient he was about to interview.

This sort of provision was not unfamiliar to him. It always explained itself later. The man, he saw, was of middle age and a very ordinary appearance, so ordinary, in fact, that he was difficult to describe. His only peculiarity, being his extreme thinness. pleasant that is good vibrations issued from his atmosphere and met Dr Silence as he advanced to greet him yet vibrations alive with currents and discharges betraying the perturbed and disordered condition of his mind and brain there was evidently something wholly out of the usual in the state of his

thoughts, yet, though strange, it was not altogether distressing. It was not the impression that the broken and violent atmosphere of the insane produces upon the mind. Dr. Silence realized, in a flash, that here was a case of absorbing interest that might require all his powers to handle properly. I was watching you through my little people, as you saw, He began with a pleasant smile, advancing to shake hands. I find it of the greatest assistance sometimes. But the patient interrupted him at once. His voice was horrid and had odd, shrill changes in it,

breaking from high to low in unexpected fashion. One moment it thundered, the next it almost squeaked. I understand, without explanation, he broke in rapidly. You get the true note of a man in this. way, when he thinks himself unobserved, I quite agree. Only, in my case, I fear, you saw very little. My case, as you of course grasp, Dr. Silence, is extremely peculiar, uncomfortably peculiar. Indeed, unless Sir William had positively assured me, my friend has sent you to me, the doctor interrupted gravely, with a gentle note of authority, and that is quite sufficient.

efficient. Pray be seated, Mr. Mudge. Rassine Mudge, returned the other. Take this comfortable one, Mr. Mudge, leading him to the fixed chair, and tell me your condition, in your own way and at your own pace. My whole day is at your service if you require it. Mr Mudge moved towards the chair in question and then hesitated. You will promise me not to use the narcotic buttons, he said before sitting down. I do not need them. Also, I ought to mention that anything you think of vividly will reach my mind. That is apparently part of my peculiar case. He sat down with a sigh and arranged his things. thin legs and body into a position of comfort.

Evidently, he was very sensitive to the thoughts of others, for the picture of the green buttons had only entered the doctor's mind for a second, yet the other had instantly snacked it up. Dr. Silence noticed, too, that Mr. Mudge held untightly with both hands to the arms of the chair. I'm rather glad the chair is nailed to the floor, he remarked, he settled himself more comfortably. It suits me admirably. The fact is, and this is my case in a nutshell, which is all that a doctor of your marvellous development requires. The fact is, not the silence. I am a victim of higher space. That's what's the matter with me. Higher space. The two looked at

each other for a space in silence. The little patient holding tightly to the arm. of the chair which suited him admirably, and looking up with staring eyes, his atmosphere positively trembling with the waves of some unknown activity, while the doctor smiled kindly and sympathetically, and put his whole person as far as possible into the mental condition of the other.

Higher space, repeated Mr. Mudge. That's what it is. Now, do you think you can help me with that? There was a pause, during which the men's eyes steadily searched down below the surface of their respective personalities. Then Dr. Silence spoke, I'm quite sure I can help you, he answered quietly. Sympathy must always help, and suffering always owns my sympathy. I see you have suffered cruelly. You must tell me all about your. case, and when I hear the gradual steps by which you reached this strange condition, I have no doubt

I can be of assistance to you. He drew a chair up beside his interlocutor, and laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment. His whole being radiated kindness, intelligence, desire to help. For instance, he went on, I feel sure. It was the result of no mere chance. that you became familiar with the terrors of what you term higher space. For higher space is no mere external measurement. It is, of course, a spiritual state, a spiritual condition, an inner development, and one that we must recognize as abnormal, since it is beyond the reach of the world at the present stage of evolution.

Higher space is a mythical state. "'Oh!' cried the other, rubbing his bird-like hands with pleasure. "'The relief it is to be able to talk to someone who can understand. "'Of course what you say is the utter truth. "'And you are right. "'The no mere chance led me to my present condition, "'but, on the other hand, prolonged and deliberate study. "'Mier chance, in a sense, now governs it.

"'I mean, my entering the condition, of higher space seems to depend upon the chance of this and that circumstance. For instance, the mere sound of that German band sent me off. Not that all music will do so, but certain sounds, certain vibrations at once key me up to the requisite pitch, and off I go. Wagner's music always does it, and that band must have been playing a stray bit of a very bit of But I'll come to all that later, only first, I must ask you to send away your man from the spy hole. John's silence looked up with a start, for Mr Mudge's back was to the door, and there was no mirror. He saw the brown eye of Barker glued to the little circle of glass, and he crossed the room

without a word, and snapped down the black shutter provided for the purpose, and then heard Barker snuffle away along the passage. Now, continued the little man in the chair, I can begin. You have managed to put me completely at my ease, and I feel I may tell you my whole case without shame or reserve. You will understand, but you must be patient with me. If I go into details that are already familiar to you, details of higher space, I mean, and if I seem to you, and if I seem stupid when I have to describe things that transcend the power of language and are really therefore indescribable. My dear friend put in the other calmly, that goes without saying. To know higher space is an experience that defies description and one is obliged to make use of more

or less intelligible symbols. But pray proceed. Your vivid thoughts, will tell me more than your halting words. An immense sigh of relief proceeded from the little figure, half lost in the depths of the chair. Such intelligent sympathy, meeting him halfway, was a new experience to him, and it touched his heart at once. He leaned back, relaxing his tight hold of the arms,

and began in his thin, scale-like voice. My mother was a French-referenced. woman, and my father, an Essex Bargeman, he said abruptly, hence my name, Rassine and Mudge. My father died before I ever saw him. My mother inherited money from her border relations, and when she died soon after, I was left alone, with wealth and a strange freedom. I had no guardian, trustees, sisters, brothers, or any connection in the world to look. after me. I grew up, therefore, utterly without education. This much was to my advantage. I learned none of that deceitful rubbish taught in schools, and so had nothing to unlearn when I awakened to my true

love, mathematics, higher mathematics, and higher geometry. These, however, I seemed to know instinctively. It was like the memory of what I had deeply studied before. The principles were in my blood, and I simply raced through the ordinary stages and beyond, and then did the same with geometry. Afterwards, when I read the books on these subjects, I understood how swift and undeviating the knowledge had come back to me. It was simply memory.

It was simply recollecting the memory, of what I had known before in a previous existence and required no books to teach me. In his growing excitement, Mr. Mudge attempted to drag the chair forward a little nearer to his listener and then smiled faintly as he resigned himself instantly again to its removability and plunged anew into the recital of his singular disease. The audacious speculations of Boliai, the amazing theories of Gauss, that through a point more than one line could be drawn parallel to a given line, the possibility that the angles of a triangle are together greater than two right angles, if drawn upon immense curvatures, the breathless intuitions of Beltrami and

Labachuski, all these I hurried through and emerged, panting but unsatisfied, upon the verse, of my new world, my higher space possibilities, in a word, my disease. How I got there, he resumed after a brief pause, during which he appeared to be listening intently for an approaching sound. It's more than I can put intelligibly into words. I can only hope to leave your mind with an intuitive, a comprehension of the possibility of what I say. Here, however, became a change. At this point, I was no longer absorbing the fruits of studies I had made before. It was the beginning of new efforts to learn for the first time,

and I had to go slowly and laboriously through terrible work. Here, I sought for the theories and speculations of others, but books were few and far between, and with the exception of one man, a dreamer, the world called him, whose audacity and piercing intuition amazed and delighted me beyond description, I found no one to guide or help. You, of course, Dr. Silence, understand something of what I'm driving at with these stammering words, though you cannot perhaps yet guess what depths of pain my new knowledge brought me to,

nor why an acquaintance with a new development of space should prove a source of misery and terror. Mr Racine Mudge, remembering that the chair would not move, did the next best thing he could, in his desire to draw nearer to the attentive man facing him, and sat forward upon the very edge of the cushions, crossing his legs and gesticulating with both hands, as though he saw into this region of new space he was attempting to describe,

and might any moment tumble into it bodily from the edge of the chair and disappear from view. John Silence, separated from him by three paces, sat with his eyes fixed upon the thin white face opposite, noting every word and every gesture with deep attention. This room we now sit in, Dr. Silence, Has one side open to space, to higher space? A closed box only seems closed. There is a way in and out of a soap bubble without breaking the skin.

You tell me no new thing, the doctor interposed gently. Hence, if higher space exists and our world borders upon it and lies partially in it, It follows necessarily that we see only portions of all objects. We never see their true and complete shape. We see their three measurements, but not their fourth. The new direction is concealed from us. And when I hold this book and move my hand all round it, I have not really made a complete circuit.

We only perceive those portions of any object which exist in our three dimensions. The rest escapes us. But once we learn to see in higher space, objects will appear as they actually are, only they will thus be hardly recognisable. Now you may begin to grasp something of what I'm coming to. I'm beginning to understand something of what you must have suffered,

observed the doctor soothingly, for I have made similar experiments myself and only stopped just in time. You are the one man in all the world who can hear and understand and sympathise, exclaimed Mr Mudge, grasping his hand and holding it tightly while he spoke. The nailed chair prevented further excitability. Well, he resumed after a moment's pause. I procured the implements and the coloured blocks for practical experiment, and I followed the instructions carefully

till I had arrived at a working conception of four-dimensional space. The tesseract, the figure whose boundaries are cubes, I knew by heart, that is to say, I knew it and saw it mentally, for my eye, of course, could never take in a new measurement, or my hands and feet handle it. So at least, I thought, he added, making a wry face. I had reached the stage, you see, when I could imagine in a new dimension. I was able to conceive the shape of that new figure, which is intrinsically different to all we know,

the shape of the tesseract. I could perceive in four dimensions. When, therefore, I looked at a cube, I could see all its sides at once. Its top was not foreshortened, nor its farther side and base invisible. I saw the whole thing out flat, so to speak, and this tesseract was bounded by cubes. Moreover, I also saw its contents, its insides. You were not yourself able to enter this new world, interrupted Dr. Silence. Not then. I was only able to conceive intuitively

what it was like and how exactly it must look. Later, when I slipped in there and saw objects in their entirety, unlimited by the paucity of our poor three measurements, I very nearly lost my life, for, you see, space does not stop at a single new dimension of fourth. It extends in all possible new ones, and we must conceive it as containing, any number of new dimensions. In other words, there is no space at all, but only a spiritual condition.

But meanwhile, I had come to grasp the strange fact that the objects in our normal world appear to us only partially. Mr. Mudge moved farther forward till he was balanced dangerously on the very edge of the chair. From this starting point, he resumed, I began my studies and experiments and continued them for years. I had money, and I was without friends. I lived in solitude and experimented. My intellect, of course, had little part in the work, for intellectually it was all unthinkable. Never was the limitation of mere reason more plainly demonstrated. It was mystically, intuitively, spiritually that I began to advance. And what I learned and knew and did is all impossible to put into language,

since it all describes experiences transcending the experiences of men. It is only some of the results, what you would call the symptoms of my disease, that I can give you. And even these must often appear. absurd contradictions and impossible paradoxes. I can only tell you, Dr. Silence, his manner became exceedingly impressive, that I reached sometimes a point of view

whence all the great puzzle of the world became plain to me, and I understood what they call in the yoga books the great heresy of separateness. Why all great teachers have urged the necessity of man loving his neighbour as himself. How men are all really one, and why the utter loss of self is necessary to salvation and the discovery of the true life of the soul? He paused a moment and drew breath. Your speculations have been my own long ago, the doctor said quietly, I fully realised the force of your words. Men are,

doubtless, not separate at all, in the sense they imagine. All this about the very much higher space, I only dimly, very dimly, conceived, of course. The other went on, raising his voice again by jerks. But what did happen to me was the humbler accident of the simple disaster. Oh dear, how shall I put it? He stammered and showed visible signs of distress. It was simply this, he resumed with a sudden rush of words, that accidentally,

as the result of my years of experiment, I one day slipped bodily into the next world, the world of four dimensions, yet without knowing precisely how I got there, or how I could get back again. I discovered that is that my ordinary three-dimensional body was but an expression, a projection, of my higher four-dimensional body. Now you understand what I meant much earlier in our talk when I spoke of chance. I cannot control my entrance or exit. Certain people, certain human atmospheres,

certain wandering forces, thoughts, desires even, the radiations of certain combinations of colour, and above all, the vibrations of certain kinds of music, will suddenly throw me into a state of what I can only describe as an intense and terrific inner vibration. And behold, I am off, off in the direction at right angles to all our known directions. Off in the direction the cube takes when it begins to trace the outlines of the new figure. Off into my breathless and semi-divine higher space. off inside myself into the world of four dimensions.

He gasped and dropped back into the depths of the immovable chair. And there, he whispered, his voice issuing from among the cushions, there I have to stay until these vibrations subside, or until they do something which I cannot find words to describe properly. or intelligibly to you, and then, behold, I am back again. First, that is, I disappear, then I reappear. Just so, exclaimed Dr. Silence. And that is why a few, why a few moments ago, interrupted Mr. Mudge, taking the words out of his mouth. You've found me gone, and then saw me return. The music of that wretched German band sent me off.

Your intense thinking about me brought me back when the band had stopped it far out now. I saw you approach to people and I saw Barker's intention of doing so later. For me no interiors are hidden. I see inside. When in that state, the content of your mind, as of your body, is open to me

as the day. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Mr. Mudge stopped and again mocked his brow. A light trembling ran over the surface of his small body, like wind of grass. He still held tightly to the arms of the chair. At first, he presently resumed, my new experiences was so vividly interesting that I felt no alarm, and there was no room for it. The alarm came a little later. Then you actually penetrated far enough into that state to experience yourself as a normal portion of it, asked the doctor, leaning forward, deeply interested. Mr. Mudge nodded, a perspiring face in reply. I did, he whispered. Undoubtedly I did. Undoubtedly I did. I'm coming to all that. It began first at night, when I realised that sleep brought no loss of consciousness.

The spirit, of course, can never sleep. Only the body becomes unconscious. Interposed John's silence. Yes, we know that, theoretically. At night, of course, spirit is active elsewhere, and we have no memory of where and how, simply because the brain stays behind and receives no record. But I found that while remaining conscious, I also retained memory. I had attained to the state of continuous consciousness. For at night, I regularly, with the first approaches of drowsiness, entered Nolens Valence, the four-dimensional world. For a time, this happened regularly. and I could not control it, though later I found a way to regulate it better.

Apparently, sleep is unnecessary in the higher, the four-dimensional body. Yes, perhaps, but I should infinitely have preferred dull sleep to the knowledge. Four, unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owing to my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this new world that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift of a monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that I cannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings in it.

More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picture them to myself even, but can recall only the memory of the impression they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all, to be in several places at once, for instance. Perfectly, interrupted John's silence, noticing the increase of the other's excitement. I understand exactly.

But now, please, tell me a little more of this alarm you experienced. and how it affected you. It's not the disappearing and reappearing per se that I mind, continued Mr. Mudge, so much as certain other things. It's seeing people and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and complete shapes that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters, horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved, people, trees, children, all that I have considered beautiful in life,

everything from a human face to a cathedral, appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all I have known before. I cannot perhaps convince you why this should be terrible, but I assure you that it is so. To hear the human voice proceeding from this novel appearance which I scarcely recognise as a human body is ghastly, simply ghastly. To see inside everything and everybody is a form of insight peculiarly distressing. To be so confused in geography as to find myself one moment at the North Pole and the next at Clapham Junction. or possibly at both places simultaneously is absurdly terrifying.

Your imagination will readily furnish other details without my multiplying my experiences now, but you have no idea what it all means and how I suffer. Mr. Mudge paused in his panting the Count and lay back in his chair. He still held tightly to the arms as though they could keep him in the world of sanity and three measurements, and only now and again released his left hand in order to mop his face. He looked very thin and white and oddly unsubstantial, and he stared about him as though he saw into this other space he had been talking about.

John's silence too felt warm. He had listened to every word and had made many notes, The presence of this man had an exhilarating effect upon him. It seemed as if Mr. Racine Mudge still carried about with him something of the breathless, higher space condition he had been describing. At any rate, Dr. Silence had himself advanced sufficiently far along the legitimate paths of spiritual and psychic transformations to realize that the visions of this extraordinary little person, had a basis of truth for their origin.

After a pause that prolonged itself into minutes, he crossed the room and unlocked a drawer in a bookcase, taking out a small book with a red cover. It had a lock to it, and he produced a key out of his pocket, and proceeded to open the covers. The bright eyes of Mr. Mudge never left him for a single second. It almost seems a pity, he said at length. To cure you, Mr. Mudge, you are on the way to discovery of great things.

Though you may lose your life in the process, that is your life here in the world of three dimensions, you would lose thereby nothing of great value. You will pardon my apparent rudeness, I know, and you might gain what is infinitely greater. Your suffering, of course, lies in the fact that you alternate between the two worlds and are never wholly in one or the other. Also, I rather imagine, though I cannot be certain of this from any personal experiments, that you have here and there penetrated even into space of more than four dimensions and have hence experienced the terror you speak of. The perspiring son of the Essex Bargeman and the woman of Normandy bent his head several times in assent, but uttered no word in reply. Some strange psychic predisposition, dating no doubt from one of your former lives,

has favoured the development of your disease, and the fact that you had no normal training at school or college, No leading by the poor intellect Into the Coles de Suck The falsely called knowledge Has further caused your exceedingly rapid movement Along the lines of direct inner experience None of the knowledge you have foreshadowed

Has come to you through the senses of course Mr Mudge sitting in his immovable chair Began to tremble slightly A wind again seemed to part over his surface, and again to set it curiously in motion like a field of grass. "'You're merely talking to gain time,' he said hurriedly, in a shaking voice. "'This thinking aloud delays us. I see ahead what you are coming to, only please be quick, for something is going to happen. A band is again coming down the street, and if it plays,

if it plays Wagner, I should be off in a twinkling. precisely, I will be quick. I was leading up to the point of how to affect your cure. The way is this. You must simply learn to block the entrances. True, true, utterly true, exclaimed the little man, dodging about nervously in the depths of the chair. But how, in the name of space, is that to be done? By concentration. They are all within you, these entrances, although outer cases, such as colour, music and other things, lead you towards them. These external things you cannot hope to destroy. But once the entrances are blocked, they will lead you only to brick walls and closed channels. You will no longer be able to find the way.

Quick, quick, cried the bobbing figure in the chair. How is this concentration to be affected? This little book, continued Dr. Silence, calmly, will explain to you the way he tapped the cover. Let me now read out to you certain simple instructions composed as I see you divine entirely from my own personal experiences in the same direction. Follow these instructions and you will no longer enter the state of higher space.

The entrances will be blocked effectively. Mr Mudge sat bolt upright in his chair to listen, and John Silence cleared his throat and began to read slowly in a very distinct voice. But before he had uttered a dozen words, something happened. A sound of street music entered the room through the open ventilators, for a band had begun to play in the stable muse at the back of the back of the music. of the house. The march from Tanjuser. Odd, as it may seem, that a German band should twice within the space of an hour enter the same muse and play Wagner. It was nevertheless the fact.

Mr Racine Mudge heard it. He uttered a sharp, squeaking cry and twisted his arms with nervous energy round the chair. A piteous look that was not far from tears spread over his white face. Grey shadows followed it, the grey of fear. He began to struggle convulsively. Hold me fast! Catch me! For God's sake! Keep me here! I'm on the rush already! Oh, it's frightful! He cried in tones of anguish, his voice as thin as a reed. Dr. Silence made a plunge forward to seize him, but in a flash before he could cover the space between them, Mr Racine Mudge, screaming and struggling, seemed to shoot past him into invisibility. He disappeared like an arrow from a bow propelled at infinite speed, and his voice no longer sounded in the external air, but seemed in some curious way to make it sense. heard somewhere within the depths of the doctor's own being. It was almost like a faint

singing cry in his head, like a voice of dream, a voice of vision and unreality. Alcohol, alcohol! It cried. Give me alcohol. It's the quickest way. Alcohol, before I'm out of reach. The doctor, accustomed to rapid decisions and even more rapid action, remembered that a brandy flask stood upon the mantelpiece, and in less than a second he had seized it, and was holding it out, towards the space, above the chair, recently occupied by the visible mudge. Then, before his very eyes and long air he could unscrew the metal stopper,

he saw the contents of the closed glass file sink and lesson, as though someone were drinking violently and greedily, of the liquor within. Thanks, enough, it deadens the vibrations, cried the faint voice in his interior, as he withdrew the flask and set it back upon the mantelpiece. He understood that in Mudge's present condition one side of the flask was open to space

and he could drink without removing the stopper. He could hardly have had a more interesting proof of what he had been hearing described, at such length. But the next moment, the very same moment it almost seemed, the German band stopped midway in its tune. And there was Mr. Mudge,

back in his chair again, gasping and panting. Quick! He shrieked. Stop that band. Send it away! Catch hold of me. Block the entrances!

Block the entrances! Give me the red book. Oh! Oh! The music had begun again. It was merely a temporary interruption. The Tanhoiser march started again. This time at a tremendous pace

that made it sound like a rapid two-step, as though the instruments played against time. But the brief interruption gave Dr. Silence a moment in which to collect his scattering thoughts. And before the band had got through, through half a bar, he'd flung forward upon the chair and held Mr. Racine Mudge, the struggling little victim of higher space in a grip of iron. His arms went all round his diminutive person, and taking in a good part of the chair at the same time. He was not a big man,

yet he seemed to smother Mudge completely. Yet, even as he did so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him. He began to melt and slip away like air or water. The wood of the armchair somehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those of mudge. The phenomenon, known as the passage of matter through matter, took place. The little man seemed actually to get mixed up in his own being. Dr. Silence could just see his face beneath him. It puckered and grew dark, as though from some great internal effort. He heard the thin, reedy voice cry in his ear to block the entrances, block the entrances. And then, but how in the world describe what is indescribable?

John's silence, half rose up to watch. Racine Mudge, his face distorted. beyond all recognition, was making a marvellous inward movement, as though doubling back upon himself. He turned funnel-wise, like water in a whirling vortex, and then appeared to break up somewhat, as a reflection breaks up and divides in a distorting convex mirror. He went neither forward nor backwards, neither to the right nor the left, neither up nor down. But he went, he went utterly. He simply flashed away, out of sight, like a vanishing projectile, all but one leg. Dr. Silence just had the time and the presence of mind to seize upon the left ankle and boot

as it disappeared. And to this he held on for several seconds like grim death. Yet all the time, he knew it was a foolish and useless thing to do. The foot was in his grasp one moment and the next it seemed this was the only way he could describe it

inside his own skin and bones. And at the same time, outside his hand and all round it. It seemed mixed up in some amazing way. with his own flesh and blood. Then it was gone, and he was tightly grasping a draught of heated air. Gone, gone, gone!

cried a thick, whispering voice, somewhere deep within his own consciousness. Lost, lost, lost, lost! It repeated, growing fainter and fainter, till at length it vanished, into nothing, and the last signs of Mr Racine Mudge vanished with it. John Silence locked his red book and replaced it in the cabinet, which he fastened with a click, and when Barker answered the bell, he inquired if Mr. Mudge had left a card upon the table.

It appeared that he had, and when the servant returned with it, Dr. Silence read the address and made a note of it. It was in North London. Mr Mudge has gone, he said quietly to Barker, noticing his expression of alarm. He's not taking his hat with him, sir. Mr Mudge requires no hat where he is now. Continued the doctor, stooping to poke the fire,

but he may return for it. And the umbrella, sir? And the umbrella. "'He didn't go out my way, sir, if you please,' "'stuttered the amazed servant, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness. "'Mr. Mudge has his own way of coming and going, and prefers it. "'If he returns by the door at any time, "'remember to bring him instantly to me,

"'and be kind and gentle with him and ask no questions. "'Also remember, Barker. to think pleasantly, sympathetically, affectionately of him while he is away. Mr Mudge is a very suffering gentleman. Barker bowed and went out of the room backwards, gasping and feeling round the inside of his collar with three very hot fingers of one hand.

It was two days later when he brought in a telegram to the study. Dr. Silence opened it and read, as follows. Bombay. It just slipped out again. All safe. Have blocked entrances. Thousand thanks.

Address Cook's London. Mudge. Dr. Silence looked up and saw Barker staring at him bewilderingly. It occurred to him that somehow he knew the contents of the telegram. Make a parcel of Mr. Muncher.

his things, he said briefly, and address them Thomas Cook and Sons, Ludgate Circus, and send them there exactly a month from today, and marked to be called for. Yes, sir, said Barker, leaving the room with a deep sigh and a hurried glance at the waste paper basket, where his master had dropped the pink paper. End of Chapter 5, read by Alan Lord. End of three more John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood.