Is there not blood on it? It is the blood of one of them, a woman, a hag, who tore off the leg of a chamois as I looked, and pursued me through the accursed wood. I Whether it was I who spun round, or the room which seemed to spin round me, I knew not, but I heard myself falling, collapsed on the floor, and the next time that I was conscious at all I was in bed. There was Ingram there, who told me that I was quite safe, and another man, a stranger, who pricked my arm with the nozzle of a syringe, and reassured me.  A day or two later I gave a coherent account of my adventure, and three or four men, armed with guns, went over my traces. They found the bush in which I had stumbled, with a pool of blood which had soaked into the snow, and, still following my skitracks, they came on the body of a chamois, from which had been torn one of its hindlegs and one eyesocket was empty. That is all the corroboration of my story that I can give the reader, and for myself I imagine that the creature which pursued me was either not killed by my blow or that her fellows removed her body.  Anyhow, it is open to the incredulous to prowl about the caves of the Ungeheuerhorn, and see if anything occurs that may convince them. The House with the Brickkiln The hamlet of Trevor Major lies very lonely and sequestered in a hollow below the north side of the south downs that stretch westward from Lewes, and run parallel with the coast. It is a hamlet of some three or four dozen inconsiderable houses and cottages much girt about with trees, but the big Norman church and the manor house which stands a little outside the village are evidence of a more conspicuous past. This latter, except for a tenancy of rather less than three weeks, now four years ago, has stood unoccupied since the summer of 1896, and though it could be taken at a rent almost comically small, it is highly improbable that either of its last tenants, even if times were very bad, would think of passing a night in it again. For myselfI was one of the tenantsI would far prefer living in a workhouse to inhabiting those lowpitched oakpanelled rooms, and I would sooner look from my garret windows on to the squalor and grime of Whitechapel than from the diamondshaped and leaded panes of the Manor of Trevor Major on to the boskage of its cool thickets, and the glimmering of its clear chalkstreams where the quick trout glance among the waving waterweeds and over the chalk and gravel of its sliding rapids. It was the news of these trout that led Jack Singleton and myself to take the house for the month between midMay and midJune, but as I have already mentioned a short three weeks was all the time we passed there, and we had more than a week of our tenancy yet unexpired when we left the place, though on the very last afternoon we enjoyed the finest dryfly fishing that has ever fallen to my lot. Singleton had originally seen the advertisement of the house in a Sussex paper, with the statement that there was good dryfly fishing belonging to it, but it was with but faint hopes of the reality of the dryfly fishing that we went down to look at the place, since we had before this so often inspected depopulated ditches which were offered to the unwary under highsounding titles. Yet after a halfhours stroll by the stream, we went straight back to the agent, and before nightfall had taken it for a month with option of renewal. We arrived accordingly from town at about five oclock on a cloudless afternoon in May, and through the mists of horror that now stand between me and the remembrance of what occurred later, I cannot forget the exquisite loveliness of the impression then conveyed. The garden, it is true, appeared to have been for years untended; weeds halfchoked the gravel paths, and the flowerbeds were a congestion of mingled wild and cultivated vegetations. It was set in a wall of mellowed brick, in which snapdragon and stonecrop had found an anchorage to their liking, and beyond that there stood sentinel a ring of ancient pines in which the breeze made music as of a distant sea. Outside that the ground sloped slightly downwards in a bank covered with a jungle of wildrose to the stream that ran round three sides of the garden, and then followed a meandering course through the two big fields which lay towards the village. Over all this we had fishingrights; above, the same rights extended for another quarter of a mile to the arched bridge, over which there crossed the road which led to the house. In this field above the house on the fourth side, where the ground had been embanked to carry the road, stood a brickkiln in a ruinous state. A shallow pit, long overgrown with tall grasses and wild fieldflowers, showed where the clay had been digged. The house itself was long and narrow; entering, you passed direct into a square panelled hall, on the left of which was the diningroom which communicated with the passage leading to the kitchen and offices. On the right of the hall were two excellent sittingrooms looking out, the one on to the gravel in front of the house, the other on to the garden. From the first of these you could see, through the gap in the pines by which the road approached the house, the brickkiln of which I have already spoken. An oak staircase went up from the hall, and round it ran a gallery on to which the three principal bedrooms opened. These were commensurate with the diningroom and the two sittingrooms below. From this gallery there led a long narrow passage shut off from the rest of the house by a redbaize door, which led to a couple more guestrooms and the servants quarters. Jack Singleton and I share the same flat in town, and we had sent down in the morning Franklyn and his wife, two old and valued servants, to get things ready at Trevor Major, and procure help from the village to look after the house, and Mrs. Franklyn with her stout comfortable face all wreathed in smiles opened the door to us. She had had some previous experience of the comfortable quarters which go with fishing, and had come down prepared for the worst, but found it all of the best. The kitchenboiler was not furred; hot and cold water were laid on in the most convenient fashion, and could be obtained from taps that neither stuck nor leaked. Her husband, it appeared, had gone into the village to buy a few necessaries, and she brought up tea for us, and then went upstairs to the two rooms over the diningroom and bigger sittingroom, which we had chosen for our bedrooms, to unpack. The doors of these were exactly opposite one another to right and left of the gallery, and Jack who chose the bedroom above the sittingroom had thus a smaller room, above the second sittingroom, unoccupied, next his and opening out from it. We had a couple of hours fishing before dinner, each of us catching three or four brace of trout, and came back in the dusk to the house. Franklyn had returned from the village from his errand, reported that he had got a woman to come in to do housework in the mornings, and mentioned that our arrival had seemed to arouse a good deal of interest. The reason for this was obscure; he could only tell us that he was questioned a dozen times as to whether we really intended to live in the house, and his assurance that we did produced silence and a shaking of heads. But the countryfolk of Sussex are notable for their silence and chronic attitude of disapproval, and we put this down to local idiosyncrasy. The evening was exquisitely warm, and after dinner we pulled out a couple of basketchairs on to the gravel by the front door, and sat for an hour or so, while the night deepened in throbs of gathering darkness. The moon was not risen and the ring of pines cut off much of the pale starlight, so that when we went in, allured by the shining of the lamp in the sittingroom, it was curiously dark for a clear night in May. And at that moment of stepping from the darkness into the cheerfulness of the lighted house, I had a sudden sensation, to which, during the next fortnight, I became almost accustomed, of there being something unseen and unheard and dreadful near me. In spite of the warmth, I felt myself shiver, and concluded instantly that I had sat outofdoors long enough, and without mentioning it to Jack, followed him into the smaller sittingroom in which we had scarcely yet set foot. It like the hall was oakpanelled, and in the panels hung some halfdozen of watercolour sketches, which we examined, idly at first, and then with growing interest, for they were executed with extraordinary finish and delicacy, and each represented some aspect of the house or garden. Here you looked up the gap in the firtrees into a crimson sunset; here the garden, trim and carefully tended, dozed beneath some languid summer noon; here an angry wreath of stormcloud brooded over the meadow where the troutstream ran grey and leaden below a threatening sky, while another, the most careful and arresting of all, was a study of the brickkiln. In this, alone of them all, was there a human figure; a man, dressed in grey, peered into the open door from which issued a fierce red glow. The figure was painted with miniaturelike elaboration; the face was in profile, and represented a youngish man, cleanshaven with a long aquiline nose and singularly square chin. The sketch was long and narrow in shape, and the chimney of the kiln appeared against a dark sky. From it there issued a thin streamer of grey smoke. Jack looked at this with attention. What a horrible picture, he said, and how beautifully painted. I feel as if it meant something, as if it was a representation of something that happened, not a mere sketch. By Jove! He broke off suddenly, and went in turn to each of the other pictures. Thats a queer thing, he said. See if you notice what I mean. With the brickkiln rather vividly impressed on my mind, it was not difficult to see what he had noticed. In each of the pictures appeared the brickkiln, chimney and all, now seen faintly between trees, now in full view, and in each the chimney was smoking. And the odd part is that from the garden side, you cant really see the kiln at all, observed Jack, its hidden by the house, and yet the artist F. A., as I see by his signature, puts it in just the same. What do you make of that? I asked. Nothing. I suppose he had a fancy for brickkilns. Lets have a game of picquet. A fortnight of our three weeks passed without incident, except that again and again the curious feeling of something dreadful being close at hand was present in my mind. In a way, as I said, I got used to it, but on the other hand the feeling itself seemed to gain in poignancy. Once just at the end of the fortnight I mentioned it to Jack. Odd you should speak of it, he said, because Ive felt the same. When do you feel it? Do you feel it now for instance? We were again sitting out after dinner, and as he spoke I felt it with far greater intensity than ever before. And at the same moment the housedoor which had been closed, though probably not latched, swung gently open, letting out a shaft of light from the hall, and as gently swung to again, as if something had stealthily entered. Yes, I said. I felt it then. I only feel it in the evening. It was rather bad that time. Jack was silent a moment. Funny thing the door opening and shutting like that, he said. Lets go indoors. We got up and I remember seeing at that moment that the windows of my bedroom were lit; Mrs. Franklyn probably was making things ready for the night. Simultaneously, as we crossed the gravel, there came from just inside the house the sound of a hurried footstep on the stairs, and entering we found Mrs. Franklyn in the hall, looking rather white and startled. Anything wrong? I asked. She took two or three quick breaths before she answered No, sir, she said, at least nothing that I can give an account of. I was tidying up in your room, and I thought you came in. But there was nobody, and it gave me a turn. I left my candle there; I must go up for it. I waited in the hall a moment, while she again ascended the stairs, and passed along the gallery to my room. At the door, which I could see was open, she paused, not entering. What is the matter? I asked from below. I left the candle alight, she said, and its gone out. Jack laughed. And you left the door and window open, said he. Yes, sir, but not a breath of wind is stirring, said Mrs. Franklyn, rather faintly. This was true, and yet a few moments ago the heavy halldoor had swung open and back again. Jack ran upstairs. Well brave the dark together, Mrs. Franklyn, he said. He went into my room, and I heard the sound of a match struck. Then through the open door came the light of the rekindled candle and simultaneously I heard a bell ring in the servants quarters. In a moment came steps, and Franklyn appeared. What bell was that? I asked. Mr. Jacks bedroom, sir, he said. I felt there was a marked atmosphere of nerves about for which there was really no adequate cause. All that had happened of a disturbing nature was that Mrs. Franklyn had thought I had come into my bedroom, and had been startled by finding I had not. She had then left the candle in a draught, and it had been blown out. As for a bell ringing, that, even if it had happened, was a very innocuous proceeding. Mouse on a wire, I said. Mr. Jack is in my room this moment lighting Mrs. Franklyns candle for her. Jack came down at this juncture, and we went into the sittingroom. But Franklyn apparently was not satisfied, for we heard him in the room above us, which was Jacks bedroom, moving about with his slow and rather ponderous tread. Then his steps seemed to pass into the bedroom adjoining, and we heard no more. I remember feeling hugely sleepy that night, and went to bed earlier than usual, to pass rather a broken night with stretches of dreamless sleep interspersed with startled awakenings, in which I passed very suddenly into complete consciousness. Sometimes the house was absolutely still, and the only sound to be heard was the sighing of the night breeze outside in the pines, but sometimes the place seemed full of muffled movements, and once I could have sworn that the handle of my door turned. That required verification, and I lit my candle, but found that my ears must have played me false. Yet even as I stood there, I thought I heard steps just outside, and with a considerable qualm, I must confess, I opened the door and looked out. But the gallery was quite empty, and the house quite still. Then from Jacks room opposite I heard a sound that was somehow comforting, the snorts of the snorer, and I went back to bed and slept again, and when next I woke, morning was already breaking in red lines on the horizon, and the sense of trouble that had been with me ever since last evening had gone. Heavy rain set in after lunch next day, and as I had arrears of letterwriting to do, and the water was soon both muddy and rising, I came home alone about five, leaving Jack still sanguine by the stream, and worked for a couple of hours sitting at a writingtable in the room overlooking the gravel at the front of the house, where hung the watercolours. By seven I had finished, and just as I got up to light candles, since it was already dusk, I saw, as I thought, Jacks figure emerge from the bushes that bordered the path to the stream, on to the space in front of the house. Then instantaneously and with a sudden queer sinking of the heart, quite unaccountable, I saw that it was not Jack at all, but a stranger. He was only some six yards from the window, and after pausing there a moment he came close up to the window, so that his face nearly touched the glass, looking intently at me. In the light from the freshlykindled candles I could distinguish his features with great clearness, but though, as far as I knew, I had never seen him before, there was something familiar about both his face and figure. He appeared to smile at me, but the smile was one of inscrutable evil and malevolence, and immediately he walked on, straight towards the housedoor opposite him, and out of sight of the sittingroom window. Now, little though I liked the look of the man, he was, as I have said, familiar to my eye, and I went out into the hall, since he was clearly coming to the frontdoor, to open it to him and learn his business. So without waiting for him to ring, I opened it, feeling sure I should find him on the step. Instead, I looked out into the empty gravelsweep, the heavyfalling rain, the thick dusk. And even as I looked, I felt something that I could not see push by me through the halfopened door and pass into the house. Then the stairs creaked, and a moment after a bell rang. Franklyn is the quickest man to answer a bell I have ever seen, and next instant he passed me going upstairs. He tapped at Jacks door, entered, and then came down again. Mr. Jack still out, sir? he asked. Yes. His bell ringing again? Yes, sir, said Franklyn, quite imperturbably. I went back into the sittingroom, and soon Franklyn brought a lamp. He put it on the table above which hung the careful and curious picture of the brickkiln, and then with a sudden horror I saw why the stranger on the gravel outside had been so familiar to me. In all respects he resembled the figure that peered into the kiln; it was more than a resemblance, it was an identity. And what had happened to this man who had inscrutably and evilly smiled at me? And what had pushed in through the halfclosed door? At that moment I saw the face of Fear; my mouth went dry, and I heard my heart leaping and cracking in my throat. That face was only turned on me for a moment, and then away again, but I knew it to be the genuine thing; not apprehension, not foreboding, not a feeling of being startled, but Fear, cold Fear. And then though nothing had occurred to assuage the Fear, it passed, and a certain sort of reason usurpedfor so I must sayits place. I had certainly seen somebody on the gravel outside the house; I had supposed he was going to the frontdoor. I had opened it, and found he had not come to the frontdoor. Orand once again the terror resurgedhad the invisible pushing thing been that which I had seen outside? And if so, what was it? And how came it that the face and figure of the man I had seen was the same as that which was so scrupulously painted in the picture of the brickkiln? I set myself to argue down the Fear for which there was no more foundation than this, this and the repetition of the ringing bell, and my belief is that I did so. I told myself, till I believed it, that a mana human manhad been walking across the gravel outside, and that he had not come to the frontdoor but had gone, as he might easily have done, up the drive into the highroad. I told myself that it was mere fancy that was the cause of the belief that Something had pushed in by me, and as for the ringing of the bell, I said to myself, as was true, that this had happened before. And I must ask the reader to believe also that I argued these things away, and looked no longer on the face of Fear itself. I was not comfortable, but I fell short of being terrified. I sat down again by the window looking on to the gravel in front of the house, and finding another letter that asked, though it did not demand an answer, proceeded to occupy myself with it. Straight in front led the drive through the gap in the pines, and passed through the field where lay the brickkiln. In a pause of pageturning I looked up and saw something unusual about it; at the same moment an unusual smell came to my nostril. What I saw was smoke coming out of the chimney of the kiln, what I smelt was the odour of roasting meat. The windsuch as there wasset from the kiln to the house. But as far as I knew the smell of roast meat probably came from the kitchen where dinner, so I supposed, was cooking. I had to tell myself this I wanted reassurance, lest the face of Fear should look whitely on me again. Then there came a crisp step on the gravel, a rattle at the frontdoor, and Jack came in. Good sport, he said, you gave up too soon. And he went straight to the table above which hung the picture of the man at the brickkiln, and looked at it. Then there was silence; and eventually I spoke, for I wanted to know one thing. Seen anybody? I asked. Yes. Why do you ask? Because I have also; the man in that picture. Jack came and sat down near me. Its a ghost, you know, he said. He came down to the river about dusk and stood near me for an hour. At first I thought he waswas real, and I warned him that he had better stand further off if he didnt want to be hooked. And then it struck me he wasnt real, and I cast, well, right through him, and about seven he walked up towards the house. Were you frightened? No. It was so tremendously interesting. So you saw him here too. Whereabouts? Just outside. I think he is in the house now. Jack looked round. Did you see him come in? he asked. No, but I felt him. Theres another queer thing too; the chimney of the brickkiln is smoking. Jack looked out of the window. It was nearly dark but the wreathing smoke could just be seen. So it is, he said, fat, greasy smoke. I think Ill go up and see whats on. Come too? I think not, I said. Are you frightened? It isnt worth while. Besides, it is so tremendously interesting. Jack came back from his little expedition still interested. He had found nothing stirring at the kiln, but though it was then nearly dark the interior was faintly luminous, and against the black of the sky he could see a wisp of thick white smoke floating northwards. But for the rest of the evening we neither heard nor saw anything of abnormal import, and the next day ran a course of undisturbed hours. Then suddenly a hellish activity was manifested. That night, while I was undressing for bed, I heard a bell ring furiously, and I thought I heard a shout also. I guessed where the ring came from, since Franklyn and his wife had long ago gone to bed, and went straight to Jacks room. But as I tapped at the door I heard his voice from inside calling loud to me. Take care, it said, hes close to the door. A sudden qualm of blank fear took hold of me, but mastering it as best I could, I opened the door to enter, and once again something pushed softly by me, though I saw nothing. Jack was standing by his bed, halfundressed. I saw him wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. Hes been here again, he said. I was standing just here, a minute ago, when I found him close by me. He came out of the inner room, I think. Did you see what he had in his hand? I saw nothing. It was a knife; a great long carving knife. Do you mind my sleeping on the sofa in your room tonight? I got an awful turn then. There was another thing too. All round the edge of his clothes, at his collar and at his wrists, there were little flames playing, little white licking flames. But next day, again, we neither heard nor saw anything, nor that night did the sense of that dreadful presence in the house come to us. And then came the last day. We had been out till it was dark, and as I said, had a wonderful day among the fish. On reaching home we sat together in the sittingroom, when suddenly from overhead came a tread of feet, a violent pealing of the bell, and the moment after yell after yell as of someone in mortal agony. The thought occurred to both of us that this might be Mrs. Franklyn in terror of some fearful sight, and together we rushed up and sprang into Jacks bedroom. The doorway into the room beyond was open, and just inside it we saw the man bending over some dark huddled object. Though the room was dark we could see him perfectly, for a light stale and impure seemed to come from him. He had again a long knife in his hand, and as we entered he was wiping it on the mass that lay at his feet. Then he took it up, and we saw what it was, a woman with head nearly severed. But it was not Mrs. Franklyn. And then the whole thing vanished, and we were standing looking into a dark and empty room. We went downstairs without a word, and it was not till we were both in the sittingroom below that Jack spoke. And he takes her to the brickkiln, he said rather unsteadily. I say, have you had enough of this house? I have. There is hell in it. About a week later Jack put into my hand a guidebook to Sussex open at the description of Trevor Major, and I read Just outside the village stands the picturesque manor house, once the home of the artist and notorious murderer, Francis Adam. It was here he killed his wife, in a fit, it is believed, of groundless jealousy, cutting her throat and disposing of her remains by burning them in a brickkiln. Certain charred fragments found six months afterwards led to his arrest and execution. So I prefer to leave the house with the brickkiln and the pictures signed F. A. to others. The Man Who Went Too Far The little village of St. Faiths nestles in a hollow of wooded hill up on the north bank of the river Fawn in the county of Hampshire, huddling close round its grey Norman church as if for spiritual protection against the fays and fairies, the trolls and little people, who might be supposed still to linger in the vast empty spaces of the New Forest, and to come after dusk and do their doubtful businesses. Once outside the hamlet you may walk in any direction (so long as you avoid the high road which leads to Brockenhurst) for the length of a summer afternoon without seeing sign of human habitation, or possibly even catching sight of another human being. Shaggy wild ponies may stop their feeding for a moment as you pass, the white scuts of rabbits will vanish into their burrows, a brown viper perhaps will glide from your path into a clump of heather, and unseen birds will chuckle in the bushes, but it may easily happen that for a long day you will see nothing human. But you will not feel in the least lonely; in summer, at any rate, the sunlight will be gay with butterflies, and the air thick with all those woodland sounds which like instruments in an orchestra combine to play the great symphony of the yearly festival of June. Winds whisper in the birches, and sigh among the firs; bees are busy with their redolent labour among the heather, a myriad birds chirp in the green temples of the forest trees, and the voice of the river prattling over stony places, bubbling into pools, chuckling and gulping round corners, gives you the sense that many presences and companions are near at hand. Yet, oddly enough, though one would have thought that these benign and cheerful influences of wholesome air and spaciousness of forest were very healthful comrades for a man, in so far as nature can really influence this wonderful human genus which has in these centuries learned to defy her most violent storms in its wellestablished houses, to bridle her torrents and make them light its streets, to tunnel her mountains and plough her seas, the inhabitants of St. Faiths will not willingly venture into the forest after dark. For in spite of the silence and loneliness of the hooded night it seems that a man is not sure in what company he may suddenly find himself, and though it is difficult to get from these villagers any very clear story of occult appearances, the feeling is widespread. One story indeed I have heard with some definiteness, the tale of a monstrous goat that has been seen to skip with hellish glee about the woods and shady places, and this perhaps is connected with the story which I have here attempted to piece together. It too is wellknown to them; for all remember the young artist who died here not long ago, a young man, or so he struck the beholder, of great personal beauty, with something about him that made mens faces to smile and brighten when they looked on him. His ghost they will tell you walks constantly by the stream and through the woods which he loved so, and in especial it haunts a certain house, the last of the village, where he lived, and its garden in which he was done to death. For my part I am inclined to think that the terror of the Forest dates chiefly from that day. So, such as the story is, I have set it forth in connected form. It is based partly on the accounts of the villagers, but mainly on that of Darcy, a friend of mine and a friend of the man with whom these events were chiefly concerned. The day had been one of untarnished midsummer splendour, and as the sun drew near to its setting, the glory of the evening grew every moment more crystalline, more miraculous. Westward from St. Faiths the beechwood which stretched for some miles toward the heathery upland beyond already cast its veil of clear shadow over the red roofs of the village, but the spire of the grey church, overtopping all, still pointed a flaming orange finger into the sky. The river Fawn, which runs below, lay in sheets of skyreflected blue, and wound its dreamy devious course round the edge of this wood, where a rough twoplanked bridge crossed from the bottom of the garden of the last house in the village, and communicated by means of a little wicker gate with the wood itself. Then once out of the shadow of the wood the stream lay in flaming pools of the molten crimson of the sunset, and lost itself in the haze of woodland distances. This house at the end of the village stood outside the shadow, and the lawn which sloped down to the river was still flecked with sunlight. Gardenbeds of dazzling colour lined its gravel walks, and down the middle of it ran a brick pergola, halfhidden in clusters of ramblerrose and purple with starry clematis. At the bottom end of it, between two of its pillars, was slung a hammock containing a shirtsleeved figure. The house itself lay somewhat remote from the rest of the village, and a footpath leading across two fields, now tall and fragrant with hay, was its only communication with the high road. It was lowbuilt, only two stories in height, and like the garden, its walls were a mass of flowering roses. A narrow stone terrace ran along the garden front, over which was stretched an awning, and on the terrace a young silentfooted manservant was busied with the laying of the table for dinner. He was neathanded and quick with his job, and having finished it he went back into the house, and reappeared again with a large rough bathtowel on his arm. With this he went to the hammock in the pergola. Nearly eight, sir, he said. Has Mr. Darcy come yet? asked a voice from the hammock. No, sir. If Im not back when he comes, tell him that Im just having a bathe before dinner. The servant went back to the house, and after a moment or two Frank Halton struggled to a sitting posture, and slipped out on to the grass. He was of medium height and rather slender in build, but the supple ease and grace of his movements gave the impression of great physical strength even his descent from the hammock was not an awkward performance. His face and hands were of very dark complexion, either from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black hair and dark eyes tended to show, from some strain of southern blood. His head was small, his face of an exquisite beauty of modelling, while the smoothness of its contour would have led you to believe that he was a beardless lad still in his teens. But something, some look which living and experience alone can give, seemed to contradict that, and finding yourself completely puzzled as to his age, you would next moment probably cease to think about that, and only look at this glorious specimen of young manhood with wondering satisfaction. He was dressed as became the season and the heat, and wore only a shirt open at the neck, and a pair of flannel trousers. His head, covered very thickly with a somewhat rebellious crop of short curly hair, was bare as he strolled across the lawn to the bathingplace that lay below.


Then for a moment there was silence, then the sound of splashed and divided waters, and presently after, a great shout of ecstatic joy, as he swam upstream with the foamed water standing in a frill round his neck. Then after some five minutes of limbstretching struggle with the flood, he turned over on his back, and with arms thrown wide, floated downstream, ripplecradled and inert. His eyes were shut, and between halfparted lips he talked gently to himself. I am one with it, he said to himself, the river and I, I and the river. The coolness and splash of it is I, and the waterherbs that wave in it are I also. And my strength and my limbs are not mine but the rivers. It is all one, all one, dear Fawn. A quarter of an hour later he appeared again at the bottom of the lawn, dressed as before, his wet hair already drying into its crisp short curls again. There he paused a moment, looking back at the stream with the smile with which men look on the face of a friend, then turned towards the house. Simultaneously his servant came to the door leading on to the terrace, followed by a man who appeared to be some halfway through the fourth decade of his years. Frank and he saw each other across the bushes and gardenbeds, and each quickening his step, they met suddenly face to face round an angle of the garden walk, in the fragrance of syringa. My dear Darcy, cried Frank, I am charmed to see you. But the other stared at him in amazement. Frank! he exclaimed. Yes, that is my name, he said laughing, what is the matter? Darcy took his hand. What have you done to yourself? he asked. You are a boy again. Ah, I have a lot to tell you, said Frank. Lots that you will hardly believe, but I shall convince you He broke off suddenly, and held up his hand. Hush, there is my nightingale, he said. The smile of recognition and welcome with which he had greeted his friend faded from his face, and a look of rapt wonder took its place, as of a lover listening to the voice of his beloved. His mouth parted slightly, showing the white line of teeth, and his eyes looked out and out till they seemed to Darcy to be focused on things beyond the vision of man. Then something perhaps startled the bird, for the song ceased. Yes, lots to tell you, he said. Really I am delighted to see you. But you look rather white and pulled down; no wonder after that fever. And there is to be no nonsense about this visit. It is June now, you stop here till you are fit to begin work again. Two months at least. Ah, I cant trespass quite to that extent. Frank took his arm and walked him down the grass. Trespass? Who talks of trespass? I shall tell you quite openly when I am tired of you, but you know when we had the studio together, we used not to bore each other. However, it is ill talking of going away on the moment of your arrival. Just a stroll to the river, and then it will be dinnertime. Darcy took out his cigarette case, and offered it to the other. Frank laughed. No, not for me. Dear me, I suppose I used to smoke once. How very odd! Given it up? I dont know. I suppose I must have. Anyhow I dont do it now. I would as soon think of eating meat. Another victim on the smoking altar of vegetarianism? Victim? asked Frank. Do I strike you as such? He paused on the margin of the stream and whistled softly. Next moment a moorhen made its splashing flight across the river, and ran up the bank. Frank took it very gently in his hands and stroked its head, as the creature lay against his shirt. And is the house among the reeds still secure? he halfcrooned to it. And is the missus quite well, and are the neighbours flourishing? There, dear, home with you, and he flung it into the air. That birds very tame, said Darcy, slightly bewildered. It is rather, said Frank, following its flight. During dinner Frank chiefly occupied himself in bringing himself uptodate in the movements and achievements of this old friend whom he had not seen for six years. Those six years, it now appeared, had been full of incident and success for Darcy; he had made a name for himself as a portrait painter which bade fair to outlast the vogue of a couple of seasons, and his leisure time had been brief. Then some four months previously he had been through a severe attack of typhoid, the result of which as concerns this story was that he had come down to this sequestered place to recruit. Yes, youve got on, said Frank at the end. I always knew you would. A.R.A. with more in prospect. Money? You roll in it, I suppose, and, O Darcy, how much happiness have you had all these years? That is the only imperishable possession. And how much have you learned? Oh, I dont mean in Art. Even I could have done well in that. Darcy laughed. Done well? My dear fellow, all I have learned in these six years you knew, so to speak, in your cradle. Your old pictures fetch huge prices. Do you never paint now? Frank shook his head. No, Im too busy, he said. Doing what? Please tell me. That is what everyone is forever asking me. Doing? I suppose you would say I do nothing. Darcy glanced up at the brilliant young face opposite him. It seems to suit you, that way of being busy, he said. Now, its your turn. Do you read? Do you study? I remember you saying that it would do us allall us artists, I meana great deal of good if we would study any one human face carefully for a year, without recording a line. Have you been doing that? Frank shook his head again. I mean exactly what I say, he said, I have been doing nothing. And I have never been so occupied. Look at me; have I not done something to myself to begin with? You are two years younger than I, said Darcy, at least you used to be. You therefore are thirtyfive. But had I never seen you before I should say you were just twenty. But was it worth while to spend six years of greatlyoccupied life in order to look twenty? Seems rather like a woman of fashion. Frank laughed boisterously. First time Ive ever been compared to that particular bird of prey, he said. No, that has not been my occupationin fact I am only very rarely conscious that one effect of my occupation has been that. Of course, it must have been if one comes to think of it. It is not very important. Quite true my body has become young. But that is very little; I have become young. Darcy pushed back his chair and sat sideways to the table looking at the other. Has that been your occupation then? he asked. Yes, that anyhow is one aspect of it. Think what youth means! It is the capacity for growth, mind, body, spirit, all grow, all get stronger, all have a fuller, firmer life every day. That is something, considering that every day that passes after the ordinary man reaches the fullblown flower of his strength, weakens his hold on life. A man reaches his prime, and remains, we say, in his prime, for ten years, or perhaps twenty. But after his primest prime is reached, he slowly, insensibly weakens. These are the signs of age in you, in your body, in your art probably, in your mind. You are less electric than you were. But I, when I reach my primeI am nearing itah, you shall see. The stars had begun to appear in the blue velvet of the sky, and to the east the horizon seen above the black silhouette of the village was growing dovecoloured with the approach of moonrise. White moths hovered dimly over the gardenbeds, and the footsteps of night tiptoed through the bushes. Suddenly Frank rose. Ah, it is the supreme moment, he said softly. Now more than at any other time the current of life, the eternal imperishable current runs so close to me that I am almost enveloped in it. Be silent a minute. He advanced to the edge of the terrace and looked out standing stretched with arms outspread. Darcy heard him draw a long breath into his lungs, and after many seconds expel it again. Six or eight times he did this, then turned back into the lamplight. It will sound to you quite mad, I expect, he said, but if you want to hear the soberest truth I have ever spoken and shall ever speak, I will tell you about myself. But come into the garden if it is not too damp for you. I have never told anyone yet, but I shall like to tell you. It is long, in fact, since I have even tried to classify what I have learned. They wandered into the fragrant dimness of the pergola, and sat down. Then Frank began Years ago, do you remember, he said, we used often to talk about the decay of joy in the world. Many impulses, we settled, had contributed to this decay, some of which were good in themselves, others that were quite completely bad. Among the good things, I put what we may call certain Christian virtues, renunciation, resignation, sympathy with suffering, and the desire to relieve sufferers. But out of those things spring very bad ones, useless renunciations, asceticism for its own sake, mortification of the flesh with nothing to follow, no corresponding gain that is, and that awful and terrible disease which devastated England some centuries ago, and from which by heredity of spirit we suffer now, Puritanism. That was a dreadful plague, the brutes held and taught that joy and laughter and merriment were evil it was a doctrine the most profane and wicked. Why, what is the commonest crime one sees? A sullen face. That is the truth of the matter. Now all my life I have believed that we are intended to be happy, that joy is of all gifts the most divine. And when I left London, abandoned my career, such as it was, I did so because I intended to devote my life to the cultivation of joy, and, by continuous and unsparing effort, to be happy. Among people, and in constant intercourse with others, I did not find it possible; there were too many distractions in towns and workrooms, and also too much suffering. So I took one step backwards or forwards, as you may choose to put it, and went straight to Nature, to trees, birds, animals, to all those things which quite clearly pursue one aim only, which blindly follow the great native instinct to be happy without any care at all for morality, or human law or divine law. I wanted, you understand, to get all joy firsthand and unadulterated, and I think it scarcely exists among men; it is obsolete. Darcy turned in his chair. Ah, but what makes birds and animals happy? he asked. Food, food and mating. Frank laughed gently in the stillness. Do not think I became a sensualist, he said. I did not make that mistake. For the sensualist carries his miseries pickaback, and round his feet is wound the shroud that shall soon enwrap him. I may be mad, it is true, but I am not so stupid anyhow as to have tried that. No, what is it that makes puppies play with their own tails, that sends cats on their prowling ecstatic errands at night? He paused a moment. So I went to Nature, he said. I sat down here in this New Forest, sat down fair and square, and looked. That was my first difficulty, to sit here quiet without being bored, to wait without being impatient, to be receptive and very alert, though for a long time nothing particular happened. The change in fact was slow in those early stages. Nothing happened? asked Darcy rather impatiently, with the sturdy revolt against any new idea which to the English mind is synonymous with nonsense. Why, what in the world should happen? Now Frank as he had known him was the most generous but most quicktempered of mortal men; in other words his anger would flare to a prodigious beacon, under almost no provocation, only to be quenched again under a gust of no less impulsive kindliness. Thus the moment Darcy had spoken, an apology for his hasty question was halfway up his tongue. But there was no need for it to have travelled even so far, for Frank laughed again with kindly, genuine mirth. Oh, how I should have resented that a few years ago, he said. Thank goodness that resentment is one of the things I have got rid of. I certainly wish that you should believe my storyin fact, you are going tobut that you at this moment should imply that you do not, does not concern me. Ah, your solitary sojournings have made you inhuman, said Darcy, still very English. No, human, said Frank. Rather more human, at least rather less of an ape. Well, that was my first quest, he continued, after a moment, the deliberate and unswerving pursuit of joy, and my method, the eager contemplation of Nature. As far as motive went, I daresay it was purely selfish, but as far as effect goes, it seems to me about the best thing one can do for ones fellowcreatures, for happiness is more infectious than smallpox. So, as I said, I sat down and waited; I looked at happy things, zealously avoided the sight of anything unhappy, and by degrees a little trickle of the happiness of this blissful world began to filter into me. The trickle grew more abundant, and now, my dear fellow, if I could for a moment divert from me into you one half of the torrent of joy that pours through me day and night, you would throw the world, art, everything aside, and just live, exist. When a mans body dies, it passes into trees and flowers. Well, that is what I have been trying to do with my soul before death. The servant had brought into the pergola a table with syphons and spirits, and had set a lamp upon it. As Frank spoke he leaned forward towards the other, and Darcy for all his matteroffact common sense could have sworn that his companions face shone, was luminous in itself. His dark brown eyes glowed from within, the unconscious smile of a child irradiated and transformed his face. Darcy felt suddenly excited, exhilarated. Go on, he said. Go on. I can feel you are somehow telling me sober truth. I daresay you are mad; but I dont see that matters. Frank laughed again. Mad? he said. Yes, certainly, if you wish. But I prefer to call it sane. However, nothing matters less than what anybody chooses to call things. God never labels his gifts; He just puts them into our hands; just as he put animals in the garden of Eden, for Adam to name if he felt disposed. So by the continual observance and study of things that were happy, continued he, I got happiness, I got joy. But seeking it, as I did, from Nature, I got much more which I did not seek, but stumbled upon originally by accident. It is difficult to explain, but I will try. About three years ago I was sitting one morning in a place I will show you tomorrow. It is down by the river brink, very green, dappled with shade and sun, and the river passes there through some little clumps of reeds. Well, as I sat there, doing nothing, but just looking and listening, I heard the sound quite distinctly of some flutelike instrument playing a strange unending melody. I thought at first it was some musical yokel on the highway and did not pay much attention. But before long the strangeness and indescribable beauty of the tune struck me. It never repeated itself, but it never came to an end, phrase after phrase ran its sweet course, it worked gradually and inevitably up to a climax, and having attained it, it went on; another climax was reached and another and another. Then with a sudden gasp of wonder I localised where it came from. It came from the reeds and from the sky and from the trees. It was everywhere, it was the sound of life. It was, my dear Darcy, as the Greeks would have said, it was Pan playing on his pipes, the voice of Nature. It was the lifemelody, the worldmelody. Darcy was far too interested to interrupt, though there was a question he would have liked to ask, and Frank went on Well, for the moment I was terrified, terrified with the impotent horror of nightmare, and I stopped my ears and just ran from the place and got back to the house panting, trembling, literally in a panic. Unknowingly, for at that time I only pursued joy, I had begun, since I drew my joy from Nature, to get in touch with Nature. Nature, force, God, call it what you will, had drawn across my face a little gossamer web of essential life. I saw that when I emerged from my terror, and I went very humbly back to where I had heard the Panpipes. But it was nearly six months before I heard them again. Why was that? asked Darcy. Surely because I had revolted, rebelled, and worst of all been frightened. For I believe that just as there is nothing in the world which so injures ones body as fear, so there is nothing that so much shuts up the soul. I was afraid, you see, of the one thing in the world which has real existence. No wonder its manifestation was withdrawn. And after six months? After six months one blessed morning I heard the piping again. I wasnt afraid that time. And since then it has grown louder, it has become more constant. I now hear it often, and I can put myself into such an attitude towards Nature that the pipes will almost certainly sound. And never yet have they played the same tune, it is always something new, something fuller, richer, more complete than before. What do you mean by such an attitude towards Nature? asked Darcy. I cant explain that; but by translating it into a bodily attitude it is this. Frank sat up for a moment quite straight in his chair, then slowly sunk back with arms outspread and head drooped. That; he said, an effortless attitude, but open, resting, receptive. It is just that which you must do with your soul. Then he sat up again. One word more, he said, and I will bore you no further. Nor unless you ask me questions shall I talk about it again. You will find me, in fact, quite sane in my mode of life. Birds and beasts, you will see behaving somewhat intimately to me, like that moorhen, but that is all. I will walk with you, ride with you, play golf with you, and talk with you on any subject you like. But I wanted you on the threshold to know what has happened to me. And one thing more will happen. He paused again, and a slight look of fear crossed his eyes. There will be a final revelation, he said, a complete and blinding stroke which will throw open to me, once and for all, the full knowledge, the full realisation and comprehension that I am one, just as you are, with life. In reality there is no me, no you, no it. Everything is part of the one and only thing which is life. I know that that is so, but the realisation of it is not yet mine. But it will be, and on that day, so I take it, I shall see Pan. It may mean death, the death of my body, that is, but I dont care. It may mean immortal, eternal life lived here and now and forever. Then having gained that, ah, my dear Darcy, I shall preach such a gospel of joy, showing myself as the living proof of the truth, that Puritanism, the dismal religion of sour faces, shall vanish like a breath of smoke, and be dispersed and disappear in the sunlit air. But first the full knowledge must be mine. Darcy watched his face narrowly. You are afraid of that moment, he said. Frank smiled at him. Quite true; you are quick to have seen that. But when it comes I hope I shall not be afraid. For some little time there was silence; then Darcy rose. You have bewitched me, you extraordinary boy, he said. You have been telling me a fairystory, and I find myself saying, Promise me it is true.  I promise you that, said the other. And I know I shant sleep, added Darcy. Frank looked at him with a sort of mild wonder as if he scarcely understood. Well, what does that matter? he said. I assure you it does. I am wretched unless I sleep. Of course I can make you sleep if I want, said Frank in a rather bored voice. Well do. Very good go to bed. Ill come upstairs in ten minutes. Frank busied himself for a little after the other had gone, moving the table back under the awning of the verandah and quenching the lamp. Then he went with his quick silent tread upstairs and into Darcys room. The latter was already in bed, but very wideeyed and wakeful, and Frank with an amused smile of indulgence, as for a fretful child, sat down on the edge of the bed. Look at me, he said, and Darcy looked. The birds are sleeping in the brake, said Frank softly, and the winds are asleep. The sea sleeps, and the tides are but the heaving of its breast. The stars swing slow, rocked in the great cradle of the Heavens, and He stopped suddenly, gently blew out Darcys candle, and left him sleeping. Morning brought to Darcy a flood of hard common sense, as clear and crisp as the sunshine that filled his room. Slowly as he woke he gathered together the broken threads of the memories of the evening which had ended, so he told himself, in a trick of common hypnotism. That accounted for it all; the whole strange talk he had had was under a spell of suggestion from the extraordinary vivid boy who had once been a man; all his own excitement, his acceptance of the incredible had been merely the effect of a stronger, more potent will imposed on his own. How strong that will was, he guessed from his own instantaneous obedience to Franks suggestion of sleep. And armed with impenetrable common sense he came down to breakfast. Frank had already begun, and was consuming a large plateful of porridge and milk with the most prosaic and healthy appetite. Slept well? he asked. Yes, of course. Where did you learn hypnotism? By the side of the river. You talked an amazing quantity of nonsense last night, remarked Darcy, in a voice prickly with reason. Rather. I felt quite giddy. Look, I remembered to order a dreadful daily paper for you. You can read about money markets or politics or cricket matches. Darcy looked at him closely. In the morning light Frank looked even fresher, younger, more vital than he had done the night before, and the sight of him somehow dinted Darcys armour of common sense. You are the most extraordinary fellow I ever saw, he said. I want to ask you some more questions. Ask away, said Frank. For the next day or two Darcy plied his friend with many questions, objections and criticisms on the theory of life and gradually got out of him a coherent and complete account of his experience. In brief then, Frank believed that by lying naked, as he put it, to the force which controls the passage of the stars, the breaking of a wave, the budding of a tree, the love of a youth and maiden, he had succeeded in a way hitherto undreamed of in possessing himself of the essential principle of life. Day by day, so he thought, he was getting nearer to, and in closer union with the great power itself which caused all life to be, the spirit of nature, of force, or the spirit of God. For himself, he confessed to what others would call paganism; it was sufficient for him that there existed a principle of life. He did not worship it, he did not pray to it, he did not praise it. Some of it existed in all human beings, just as it existed in trees and animals, to realise and make living to himself the fact that it was all one, was his sole aim and object. Here perhaps Darcy would put in a word of warning. Take care, he said. To see Pan meant death, did it not. Franks eyebrows would rise at this. What does that matter? he said. True, the Greeks were always right, and they said so, but there is another possibility. For the nearer I get to it, the more living, the more vital and young I become. What then do you expect the final revelation will do for you? I have told you, said he. It will make me immortal. But it was not so much from speech and argument that Darcy grew to grasp his friends conception, as from the ordinary conduct of his life. They were passing, for instance, one morning down the village street, when an old woman, very bent and decrepit, but with an extraordinary cheerfulness of face, hobbled out from her cottage. Frank instantly stopped when he saw her. You old darling! How goes it all? he said. But she did not answer, her dim old eyes were rivetted on his face; she seemed to drink in like a thirsty creature the beautiful radiance which shone there. Suddenly she put her two withered old hands on his shoulders. Youre just the sunshine itself, she said, and he kissed her and passed on. But scarcely a hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such tenderness occurred. A child running along the path towards them fell on its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain. A look of horror came into Franks eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled at full speed down the street, and did not pause till he was out of hearing. Darcy, having ascertained that the child was not really hurt, followed him in bewilderment. Are you without pity then? he asked. Frank shook his head impatiently. Cant you see? he asked. Cant you understand that that sort of thing, pain, anger, anything unlovely throws me back, retards the coming of the great hour! Perhaps when it comes I shall be able to piece that side of life on to the other, on to the true religion of joy. At present I cant. But the old woman. Was she not ugly? Franks radiance gradually returned. Ah, no. She was like me. She longed for joy, and knew it when she saw it, the old darling. Another question suggested itself. Then what about Christianity? asked Darcy. I cant accept it. I cant believe in any creed of which the central doctrine is that God who is Joy should have had to suffer. Perhaps it was so; in some inscrutable way I believe it may have been so, but I dont understand how it was possible. So I leave it alone; my affair is joy. They had come to the weir above the village, and the thunder of riotous cool water was heavy in the air. Trees dipped into the translucent stream with slender trailing branches, and the meadow where they stood was starred with midsummer blossomings. Larks shot up carolling into the crystal dome of blue, and a thousand voices of June sang round them. Frank, bareheaded as was his wont, with his coat slung over his arm and his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, stood there like some beautiful wild animal with eyes halfshut and mouth halfopen, drinking in the scented warmth of the air. Then suddenly he flung himself face downwards on the grass at the edge of the stream, burying his face in the daisies and cowslips, and lay stretched there in widearmed ecstasy, with his long fingers pressing and stroking the dewy herbs of the field. Never before had Darcy seen him thus fully possessed by his idea; his caressing fingers, his halfburied face pressed close to the grass, even the clothed lines of his figure were instinct with a vitality that somehow was different from that of other men. And some faint glow from it reached Darcy, some thrill, some vibration from that charged recumbent body passed to him, and for a moment he understood as he had not understood before, despite his persistent questions and the candid answers they received, how real, and how realised by Frank, his idea was. Then suddenly the muscles in Franks neck became stiff and alert, and he halfraised his head. The Panpipes, the Panpipes, he whispered. Close, oh, so close. Very slowly, as if a sudden movement might interrupt the melody, he raised himself and leaned on the elbow of his bent arm. His eyes opened wider, the lower lids drooped as if he focused his eyes on something very far away, and the smile on his face broadened and quivered like sunlight on still water, till the exultance of its happiness was scarcely human. So he remained motionless and rapt for some minutes, then the look of listening died from his face, and he bowed his head satisfied. Ah, that was good, he said. How is it possible you did not hear? Oh, you poor fellow! Did you really hear nothing? A week of this outdoor and stimulating life did wonders in restoring to Darcy the vigour and health which his weeks of fever had filched from him, and as his normal activity and higher pressure of vitality returned, he seemed to himself to fall even more under the spell which the miracle of Franks youth cast over him. Twenty times a day he found himself saying to himself suddenly at the end of some ten minutes silent resistance to the absurdity of Franks idea But it isnt possible; it cant be possible, and from the fact of his having to assure himself so frequently of this, he knew that he was struggling and arguing with a conclusion which already had taken root in his mind. For in any case a visible living miracle confronted him, since it was equally impossible that this youth, this boy, trembling on the verge of manhood, was thirtyfive. Yet such was the fact. July was ushered in by a couple of days of blustering and fretful rain, and Darcy, unwilling to risk a chill, kept to the house. But to Frank this weeping change of weather seemed to have no bearing on the behaviour of man, and he spent his days exactly as he did under the suns of June, lying in his hammock, stretched on the dripping grass, or making huge rambling excursions into the forest, the birds hopping from tree to tree after him, to return in the evening, drenched and soaked, but with the same unquenchable flame of joy burning within him. Catch cold? he would ask, Ive forgotten how to do it, I think. I suppose it makes ones body more sensible always to sleep outofdoors. People who live indoors always remind me of something peeled and skinless. Do you mean to say you slept outofdoors last night in that deluge? asked Darcy. And where, may I ask? Frank thought a moment. I slept in the hammock till nearly dawn, he said. For I remember the light blinked in the east when I awoke. Then I wentwhere did I gooh, yes, to the meadow where the Panpipes sounded so close a week ago. You were with me, do you remember? But I always have a rug if it is wet. And he went whistling upstairs. Somehow that little touch, his obvious effort to recall where he had slept, brought strangely home to Darcy the wonderful romance of which he was the still halfincredulous beholder. Sleep till close on dawn in a hammock, then the trampor probably scamperunderneath the windy and weeping heavens to the remote and lonely meadow by the weir! The picture of other such nights rose before him; Frank sleeping perhaps by the bathingplace under the filtered twilight of the stars, or the white blaze of moonshine, a stir and awakening at some dead hour, perhaps a space of silent wideeyed thought, and then awandering through the hushed woods to some other dormitory, alone with his happiness, alone with the joy and the life that suffused and enveloped him, without other thought or desire or aim except the hourly and neverceasing communion with the joy of nature. They were in the middle of dinner that night, talking on indifferent subjects, when Darcy suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence. Ive got it, he said. At last Ive got it. Congratulate you, said Frank. But what? The radical unsoundness of your idea. It is this All Nature from highest to lowest is full, crammed full of suffering; every living organism in nature preys on another, yet in your aim to get close to, to be one with nature, you leave suffering altogether out; you run away from it, you refuse to recognise it. And you are waiting, you say, for the final revelation. Franks brow clouded slightly. Well, he asked, rather wearily. Cannot you guess then when the final revelation will be? In joy you are supreme, I grant you that; I did not know a man could be so master of it. You have learned perhaps practically all that nature can teach. And if, as you think, the final revelation is coming to you, it will be the revelation of horror, suffering, death, pain in all its hideous forms. Suffering does exist you hate it and fear it. Frank held up his hand. Stop; let me think, he said. There was silence for a long minute. That never struck me, he said at length. It is possible that what you suggest is true. Does the sight of Pan mean that, do you think? Is it that nature, take it altogether, suffers horribly, suffers to a hideous inconceivable extent? Shall I be shown all the suffering? He got up and came round to where Darcy sat. If it is so, so be it, he said. Because, my dear fellow, I am near, so splendidly near to the final revelation. Today the pipes have sounded almost without pause.


I have even heard the rustle in the bushes, I believe, of Pans coming. I have seen, yes, I saw today, the bushes pushed aside as if by a hand, and piece of a face, not human, peered through. But I was not frightened, at least I did not run away this time. He took a turn up to the window and back again. Yes, there is suffering all through, he said, and I have left it all out of my search. Perhaps, as you say, the revelation will be that. And in that case, it will be goodbye. I have gone on one line. I shall have gone too far along one road, without having explored the other. But I cant go back now. I wouldnt if I could; not a step would I retrace! In any case, whatever the revelation is, it will be God. Im sure of that. The rainy weather soon passed, and with the return of the sun Darcy again joined Frank in long rambling days. It grew extraordinarily hotter, and with the fresh bursting of life, after the rain, Franks vitality seemed to blaze higher and higher. Then, as is the habit of the English weather, one evening clouds began to bank themselves up in the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunderrack, and the whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness paused and panted for the storm. After sunset the remote fires of lightning began to wink and flicker on the horizon, but when bedtime came the storm seemed to have moved no nearer, though a very low unceasing noise of thunder was audible. Weary and oppressed by the stress of the day, Darcy fell at once into a heavy uncomforting sleep. He woke suddenly into full consciousness, with the din of some appalling explosion of thunder in his ears, and sat up in bed with racing heart. Then for a moment, as he recovered himself from the panicland which lies between sleeping and waking, there was silence, except for the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window. But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again and once again it shrilled up, and then a babble of awful words was interjected. A quivering sobbing voice that he knew, said My God, oh, my God; oh, Christ! And then followed a little mocking, bleating laugh. Then was silence again; only the rain hissed on the shrubs. All this was but the affair of a moment, and without pause either to put on clothes or light a candle, Darcy was already fumbling at his doorhandle. Even as he opened it he met a terrorstricken face outside, that of the manservant who carried a light. Did you hear? he asked. The mans face was bleached to a dull shining whiteness. Yes, sir, he said. It was the masters voice. Together they hurried down the stairs, and through the diningroom where an orderly table for breakfast had already been laid, and out on to the terrace. The rain for the moment had been utterly stayed, as if the tap of the heavens had been turned off, and under the lowering black sky, not quite dark, since the moon rode somewhere serene behind the conglomerated thunderclouds, Darcy stumbled into the garden, followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow of himself was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odours of rose and lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent was some sharp and acrid smell that suddenly reminded him of a certain chalet in which he had once taken refuge in the Alps. In the blackness of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle behind him, he saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was tenanted. A gleam of white shirt was there, as if a man sitting up in it, but across that there was an obscure dark shadow, and as he approached the acrid odour grew more intense. He was now only some few yards away, when suddenly the black shadow seemed to jump into the air, then came down with tappings of hard hoofs on the brick path that ran down the pergola, and with frolicsome skippings galloped off into the bushes. When that was gone Darcy could see quite clearly that a shirted figure sat up in the hammock. For one moment, from sheer terror of the unseen, he hung on his step, and the servant joining him they walked together to the hammock. It was Frank. He was in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with braced arms. For one halfsecond he stared at them, his face a mask of horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the gums of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focused not on the two who approached him but on something quite close to him; his nostrils were widely expanded, as if he panted for breath, and terror incarnate and repulsion and deathly anguish ruled dreadful lines on his smooth cheeks and forehead. Then even as they looked the body sank backwards, and the ropes of the hammock wheezed and strained. Darcy lifted him out and carried him indoors. Once he thought there was a faint convulsive stir of the limbs that lay with so dead a weight in his arms, but when they got inside, there was no trace of life. But the look of supreme terror and agony of fear had gone from his face, a boy tired with play but still smiling in his sleep was the burden he laid on the floor. His eyes had closed, and the beautiful mouth lay in smiling curves, even as when a few mornings ago, in the meadow by the weir, it had quivered to the music of the unheard melody of Pans pipes. Then they looked further. Frank had come back from his bathe before dinner that night in his usual costume of shirt and trousers only. He had not dressed, and during dinner, so Darcy remembered, he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to above the elbow. Later, as they sat and talked after dinner on the close sultriness of the evening, he had unbuttoned the front of his shirt to let what little breath of wind there was play on his skin. The sleeves were rolled up now, the front of the shirt was unbuttoned, and on his arms and on the brown skin of his chest were strange discolorations which grew momently more clear and defined, till they saw that the marks were pointed prints, as if caused by the hoofs of some monstrous goat that had leaped and stamped upon him. The Other Bed I had gone out to Switzerland just before Christmas, expecting, from experience, a month of divinely renovating weather, of skating all day in brilliant sun, and basking in the hot frost of that windless atmosphere. Occasionally, as I knew, there might be a snowfall, which would last perhaps for fortyeight hours at the outside, and would be succeeded by another ten days of cloudless perfection, cold even to zero at night, but irradiated all day long by the unflecked splendour of the sun. Instead the climatic conditions were horrible. Day after day a gale screamed through this upland valley that should have been so windless and serene, bringing with it a tornado of sleet that changed to snow by night. For ten days there was no abatement of it, and evening after evening, as I consulted my barometer, feeling sure that the black finger would show that we were coming to the end of these abominations, I found that it had sunk a little lower yet, till it stayed, like a homing pigeon, on the s of storm. I mention these things in depreciation of the story that follows, in order that the intelligent reader may say at once, if he wishes, that all that occurred was merely a result of the malaise of nerves and digestion that perhaps arose from those stormbound and disturbing conditions. And now to go back to the beginning again. I had written to engage a room at the Htel Beau Site, and had been agreeably surprised on arrival to find that for the modest sum of twelve francs a day I was allotted a room on the first floor with two beds in it. Otherwise the hotel was quite full. Fearing to be billeted in a twentytwofranc room, by mistake, I instantly confirmed my arrangements at the bureau. There was no mistake I had ordered a twelvefranc room and had been given one. The very civil clerk hoped that I was satisfied with it, for otherwise there was nothing vacant. I hastened to say that I was more than satisfied, fearing the fate of Esau. I arrived about three in the afternoon of a cloudless and glorious day, the last of the series. I hurried down to the rink, having had the prudence to put skates in the forefront of my luggage, and spent a divine but struggling hour or two, coming up to the hotel about sunset. I had letters to write, and after ordering tea to be sent up to my gorgeous apartment, No. 23, on the first floor, I went straight up there. The door was ajar andI feel certain I should not even remember this now except in the light of what followedjust as I got close to it, I heard some faint movement inside the room and instinctively knew that my servant was there unpacking. Next moment I was in the room myself, and it was empty. The unpacking had been finished, and everything was neat, orderly, and comfortable. My barometer was on the table, and I observed with dismay that it had gone down nearly half an inch. I did not give another thought to the movement I thought I had heard from outside. Certainly I had a delightful room for my twelve francs a day. There were, as I have said, two beds in it, on one of which were already laid out my dressclothes, while nightthings were disposed on the other. There were two windows, between which stood a large washingstand, with plenty of room on it; a sofa with its back to the light stood conveniently near the pipes of central heating, there were a couple of good armchairs, a writing table, and, rarest of luxuries, another table, so that every time one had breakfast it was not necessary to pile up a drift of books and papers to make room for the tray. My window looked east, and sunset still flamed on the western faces of the virgin snows, while above, in spite of the dejected barometer, the sky was bare of clouds, and a thin slip of pale crescent moon was swung high among the stars that still burned dimly in these first moments of their kindling. Tea came up for me without delay, and, as I ate, I regarded my surroundings with extreme complacency. Then, quite suddenly and without cause, I saw that the disposition of the beds would never do; I could not possibly sleep in the bed that my servant had chosen for me, and without pause I jumped up, transferred my dress clothes to the other bed, and put my night things where they had been. It was done breathlessly almost, and not till then did I ask myself why I had done it. I found I had not the slightest idea. I had merely felt that I could not sleep in the other bed. But having made the change I felt perfectly content. My letters took me an hour or so to finish, and I had yawned and blinked considerably over the last one or two, in part from their inherent dullness, in part from quite natural sleepiness. For I had been in the train for twentyfour hours, and was fresh to these bracing airs which so conduce to appetite, activity, and sleep, and as there was still an hour before I need dress, I lay down on my sofa with a book for excuse, but the intention to slumber as reason. And consciousness ceased as if a tap had been turned off. ThenI dreamed. I dreamed that my servant came very quietly into the room, to tell me no doubt that it was time to dress. I supposed there were a few minutes to spare yet, and that he saw I was dozing, for, instead of rousing me, he moved quietly about the room, setting things in order. The light appeared to me to be very dim, for I could not see him with any distinctness, indeed, I only knew it was he because it could not be anybody else. Then he paused by my washingstand, which had a shelf for brushes and razors above it, and I saw him take a razor from its case and begin stropping it; the light was strongly reflected on the blade of the razor. He tried the edge once or twice on his thumbnail, and then to my horror I saw him trying it on his throat. Instantaneously one of those deafening dreamcrashes awoke me, and I saw the door half open, and my servant in the very act of coming in. No doubt the opening of the door had constituted the crash. I had joined a previouslyarrived party of five, all of us old friends, and accustomed to see each other often, and at dinner, and afterwards in intervals of bridge, the conversation roamed agreeably over a variety of topics, rockingturns and the prospects of weather (a thing of vast importance in Switzerland, and not a commonplace subject) and the performances at the opera, and under what circumstances as revealed in dummys hand, is it justifiable for a player to refuse to return his partners original lead in no trumps. Then over whisky and soda and the repeated last cigarette, it veered back via the Zantzigs to thought transference and the transference of emotion. Here one of the party, Harry Lambert, put forward the much discussed explanation of haunted houses based on this principle. He put it very concisely. Everything that happens, he said, whether it is a step we take, or a thought that crosses our mind, makes some change in its immediate material world. Now the most violent and concentrated emotion we can imagine is the emotion that leads a man to take so extreme a step as killing himself or somebody else. I can easily imagine such a deed so eating into the material scene, the room or the haunted heath, where it happens, that its mark lasts an enormous time. The air rings with the cry of the slain and still drips with his blood. It is not everybody who will perceive it, but sensitives will. By the way, I am sure that man who waits on us at dinner is a sensitive. It was already late, and I rose. Let us hurry him to the scene of a crime, I said. For myself I shall hurry to the scene of sleep. Outside the threatening promise of the barometer was already finding fulfilment, and a cold ugly wind was complaining among the pines, and hooting round the peaks, and snow had begun to fall. The night was thickly overcast, and it seemed as if uneasy presences were going to and fro in the darkness. But there was no use in ill augury, and certainly if we were to be housebound for a few days I was lucky in having so commodious a lodging. I had plenty to occupy myself with indoors, though I should vastly have preferred to be engaged outside, and in the immediate present how good it was to lie free in a proper bed after a cramped night in the train. I was halfundressed when there came a tap at my door, and the waiter who had served us at dinner came in carrying a bottle of whisky. He was a tall young fellow, and though I had not noticed him at dinner, I saw at once now, as he stood in the glare of the electric light, what Harry had meant when he said he was sure he was a sensitive. There is no mistaking that look it is exhibited in a peculiar inlooking of the eye. Those eyes, one knows, see further than the surface.  The bottle of whisky for monsieur, he said, putting it down on the table. But I ordered no whisky, said I. He looked puzzled. Number twentythree? he said. Then he glanced at the other bed. Ah, for the other gentleman, without doubt, he said. But there is no other gentleman, said I. I am alone here. He took up the bottle again. Pardon, monsieur, he said. There must be a mistake. I am new here; I only came today. But I thought Yes? said I. I thought that number twentythree had ordered a bottle of whisky, he repeated. Good night, monsieur, and pardon. I got into bed, extinguished the light, and feeling very sleepy and heavy with the oppression, no doubt, of the snow that was coming, expected to fall asleep at once. Instead my mind would not quite go to roost, but kept sleepily stumbling about among the little events of the day, as some tired pedestrian in the dark stumbles over stones instead of lifting his feet. And as I got sleepier it seemed to me that my mind kept moving in a tiny little circle. At one moment it drowsily recollected how I had thought I had heard movement inside my room, at the next it remembered my dream of some figure going stealthily about and stropping a razor, at a third it wondered why this Swiss waiter with the eyes of a sensitive thought that number twentythree had ordered a bottle of whisky. But at the time I made no guess as to any coherence between these little isolated facts; I only dwelt on them with drowsy persistence. Then a fourth fact came to join the sleepy circle, and I wondered why I had felt a repugnance against using the other bed. But there was no explanation of this forthcoming, either, and the outlines of thought grew more blurred and hazy, until I lost consciousness altogether. Next morning began the series of awful days, sleet and snow falling relentlessly with gusts of chilly wind, making any outofdoor amusement next to impossible. The snow was too soft for toboganning, it balled on the skies, and as for the rink it was but a series of pools of slushy snow. This in itself, of course, was quite enough to account for any ordinary depression and heaviness of spirit, but all the time I felt there was something more than that to which I owed the utter blackness that hung over those days. I was beset too by fear that at first was only vague, but which gradually became more definite, until it resolved itself into a fear of number twentythree and in particular a terror of the other bed. I had no notion why or how I was afraid of it, the thing was perfectly causeless, but the shape and the outline of it grew slowly clearer, as detail after detail of ordinary life, each minute and trivial in itself, carved and moulded this fear, till it became definite. Yet the whole thing was so causeless and childish that I could speak to no one of it; I could but assure myself that it was all a figment of nerves disordered by this unseemly weather. However, as to the details, there were plenty of them. Once I woke up from strangling nightmare, unable at first to move, but in a panic of terror, believing that I was sleeping in the other bed. More than once, too, awaking before I was called, and getting out of bed to look at the aspect of the morning, I saw with a sense of dreadful misgiving that the bedclothes on the other bed were strangely disarranged, as if someone had slept there, and smoothed them down afterwards, but not so well as not to give notice of the occupation. So one night I laid a trap, so to speak, for the intruder, of which the real object was to calm my own nervousness (for I still told myself that I was frightened of nothing), and tucked in the sheet very carefully, laying the pillow on the top of it. But in the morning it seemed as if my interference had not been to the taste of the occupant, for there was more impatient disorder than usual in the bedclothes, and on the pillow was an indentation, round and rather deep, such as we may see any morning in our own beds. Yet by day these things did not frighten me, but it was when I went to bed at night that I quaked at the thought of further developments. It happened also from time to time that I wanted something brought me, or wanted my servant. On three or four of these occasions my bell was answered by the Sensitive, as we called him, but the Sensitive, I noticed, never came into the room. He would open the door a chink to receive my order, and on returning would again open it a chink to say that my boots, or whatever it was, were at the door. Once I made him come in, but I saw him cross himself as, with a face of icy terror, he stepped into the room, and the sight somehow did not reassure me. Twice also he came up in the evening, when I had not rung at all, even as he came up the first night, and opened the door a chink to say that my bottle of whisky was outside. But the poor fellow was in a state of such bewilderment when I went out and told him that I had not ordered whisky, that I did not press for an explanation. He begged my pardon profusely; he thought a bottle of whisky had been ordered for number twentythree. It was his mistake, entirelyI should not be charged for it; it must have been the other gentleman. Pardon again; he remembered there was no other gentleman, the other bed was unoccupied. It was on the night when this happened for the second time that I definitely began to wish that I too was quite certain that the other bed was unoccupied. The ten days of snow and sleet were at an end, and tonight the moon once more, grown from a mere slip to a shining shield, swung serenely among the stars. But though at dinner everyone exhibited an extraordinary change of spirit, with the rising of the barometer and the discharge of this huge snowfall, the intolerable gloom which had been mine so long but deepened and blackened. The fear was to me now like some statue, nearly finished, modelled by the carving hands of these details, and though it still stood below its moistened sheet, any moment, I felt, the sheet might be twitched away, and I be confronted with it. Twice that evening I had started to go to the bureau, to ask to have a bed made up for me, anywhere, in the billiardroom or the smokingroom, since the hotel was full, but the intolerable childishness of the proceeding revolted me. What was I afraid of? A dream of my own, a mere nightmare? Some fortuitous disarrangement of bedlinen? The fact that a Swiss waiter made mistakes about bottles of whisky? It was an impossible cowardice. But equally impossible that night were billiards or bridge, or any form of diversion. My only salvation seemed to lie in downright hard work, and soon after dinner I went to my room (in order to make my first real countermove against fear) and sat down solidly to several hours of proofcorrecting, a menial and monotonous employment, but one which is necessary, and engages the entire attention. But first I looked thoroughly round the room, to reassure myself, and found all modern and solid; a bright paper of daisies on the wall, a floor parquetted, the hotwater pipes chuckling to themselves in the corner, my bedclothes turned down for the night, the other bed The electric light was burning brightly, and there seemed to me to be a curious stain, as of a shadow, on the lower part of the pillow and the top of the sheet, definite and suggestive, and for a moment I stood there again throttled by a nameless terror. Then taking my courage in my hands I went closer and looked at it. Then I touched it; the sheet, where the stain or shadow was, seemed damp to the hand, so also was the pillow. And then I remembered; I had thrown some wet clothes on the bed before dinner. No doubt that was the reason. And fortified by this extremely simple dissipation of my fear, I sat down and began on my proofs. But my fear had been this, that the stain had not in that first moment looked like the mere greyness of watermoistened linen. From below, at first, came the sound of music, for they were dancing tonight, but I grew absorbed in my work, and only recorded the fact that after a time there was no more music. Steps went along the passages, and I heard the buzz of conversation on landings, and the closing of doors till by degrees the silence became noticeable. The loneliness of night had come. It was after the silence had become lonely that I made the first pause in my work, and by the watch on my table saw that it was already past midnight. But I had little more to do; another halfhour would see the end of the business, but there were certain notes I had to make for future reference, and my stock of paper was already exhausted. However, I had bought some in the village that afternoon, and it was in the bureau downstairs, where I had left it, when I came in and had subsequently forgotten to bring it upstairs. It would be the work of a minute only to get it. The electric light had brightened considerably during the last hour, owing no doubt to many burners being put out in the hotel, and as I left the room I saw again the stain on the pillow and sheet of the other bed. I had really forgotten all about it for the last hour, and its presence there came as an unwelcome surprise. Then I remembered the explanation of it, which had struck me before, and for purposes of selfreassurement I again touched it. It was still damp, butHad I got chilly with my work? For it was warm to the hand. Warm, and surely rather sticky. It did not seem like the touch of the waterdamp. And at the same moment I knew I was not alone in the room. There was something there, something silent as yet, and as yet invisible. But it was there. Now for the consolation of persons who are inclined to be fearful, I may say at once that I am in no way brave, but that terror which, God knows, was real enough, was yet so interesting, that interest overruled it. I stood for a moment by the other bed, and, halfconsciously only, wiped the hand that had felt the stain, for the touch of it, though all the time I told myself that it was but the touch of the melted snow on the coat I had put there, was unpleasant and unclean. More than that I did not feel, because in the presence of the unknown and the perhaps awful, the sense of curiosity, one of the strongest instincts we have, came to the fore. So, rather eager to get back to my room again, I ran downstairs to get the packet of paper. There was still a light in the bureau, and the Sensitive, on nightduty, I suppose, was sitting there dozing. My entrance did not disturb him, for I had on noiseless felt slippers, and seeing at once the package I was in search of, I took it, and left him still unawakened. That was somehow of a fortifying nature. The Sensitive anyhow could sleep in his hard chair; the occupant of the unoccupied bed was not calling to him tonight. I closed my door quietly, as one does at night when the house is silent, and sat down at once to open my packet of paper and finish my work. It was wrapped up in an old newssheet, and struggling with the last of the string that bound it, certain words caught my eye. Also the date at the top of the paper caught my eye, a date nearly a year old, or, to be quite accurate, a date fiftyone weeks old. It was an American paper and what it recorded was this The body of Mr. Silas R. Hume, who committed suicide last week at the Htel Beau Site, Moulin sur Chalons, is to be buried at his house in Boston, Mass. The inquest held in Switzerland showed that he cut his throat with a razor, in an attack of delirium tremens induced by drink. In the cupboard of his room were found three dozen empty bottles of Scotch whisky.  So far I had read when without warning the electric light went out, and I was left in, what seemed for the moment, absolute darkness. And again I knew I was not alone, and I knew now who it was who was with me in the room. Then the absolute paralysis of fear seized me. As if a wind had blown over my head, I felt the hair of it stir and rise a little. My eyes also, I suppose, became accustomed to the sudden darkness, for they could now perceive the shape of the furniture in the room from the light of the starlit sky outside. They saw more too than the mere furniture. There was standing by the washstand between the two windows a figure, clothed only in nightgarments, and its hands moved among the objects on the shelf above the basin. Then with two steps it made a sort of dive for the other bed, which was in shadow. And then the sweat poured on to my forehead. Though the other bed stood in shadow I could still see dimly, but sufficiently, what was there. The shape of a head lay on the pillow, the shape of an arm lifted its hand to the electric bell that was close by on the wall, and I fancied I could hear it distantly ringing. Then a moment later came hurrying feet up the stairs and along the passage outside, and a quick rapping at my door. Monsieurs whisky, monsieurs whisky, said a voice just outside. Pardon, monsieur, I brought it as quickly as I could. The impotent paralysis of cold terror was still on me. Once I tried to speak and failed, and still the gentle tapping went on at the door, and the voice telling someone that his whisky was there. Then at a second attempt, I heard a voice which was mine saying hoarsely For Gods sake come in; I am alone with it. There was the click of a turned doorhandle, and as suddenly as it had gone out a few seconds before, the electric light came back again, and the room was in full illumination. I saw a face peer round the corner of the door, but it was at another face I looked, the face of a man sallow and shrunken, who lay in the other bed, staring at me with glazed eyes. He lay high in bed, and his throat was cut from ear to ear; and the lower part of the pillow was soaked in blood, and the sheet streamed with it. Then suddenly that hideous vision vanished, and there was only a sleepyeyed waiter looking into the room. But below the sleepiness terror was awake, and his voice shook when he spoke. Monsieur rang? he asked. No, monsieur had not rung. But monsieur made himself a couch in the billiardroom. The Outcast When Mrs. Acres bought the Gatehouse at Tarleton, which had stood so long without a tenant, and appeared in that very agreeable and lively little town as a resident, sufficient was already known about her past history to entitle her to friendliness and sympathy. Hers had been a tragic story, and the account of the inquest held on her husbands body, when, within a month of their marriage, he had shot himself before her eyes, was recent enough, and of as full a report in the papers as to enable our little community of Tarleton to remember and run over the salient grimness of the case without the need of inventing any further detailswhich, otherwise, it would have been quite capable of doing. Briefly, then, the facts had been as follows. Horace Acres appeared to have been a heartless fortunehuntera handsome, plausible wretch, ten years younger than his wife. He had made no secret to his friends of not being in love with her but of having a considerable regard for her more than considerable fortune. But hardly had he married her than his indifference developed into violent dislike, accompanied by some mysterious, inexplicable dread of her. He hated and feared her, and on the morning of the very day when he had put an end to himself he had begged her to divorce him; the case he promised would be undefended, and he would make it indefensible. She, poor soul, had refused to grant this; for, as corroborated by the evidence of friends and servants, she was utterly devoted to him, and stated with that quiet dignity which distinguished her throughout this ordeal, that she hoped that he was the victim of some miserable but temporary derangement, and would come to his right mind again. He had dined that night at his club, leaving his monthold bride to pass the evening alone, and had returned between eleven and twelve that night in a state of vile intoxication. He had gone up to her bedroom, pistol in hand, had locked the door, and his voice was heard screaming and yelling at her. Then followed the sound of one shot. On the table in his dressingroom was found a halfsheet of paper, dated that day, and this was read out in court. The horror of my position, he had written, is beyond description and endurance. I can bear it no longer my soul sickens.  The jury, without leaving the court, returned the verdict that he had committed suicide while temporarily insane, and the coroner, at their request, expressed their sympathy and his own with the poor lady, who, as testified on all hands, had treated her husband with the utmost tenderness and affection. For six months Bertha Acres had travelled abroad, and then in the autumn she had bought Gatehouse at Tarleton, and settled down to the absorbing trifles which make life in a small country town so busy and strenuous.