Twelve Stories and a Dream..............................................................................................................................1

H. G. Wells..............................................................................................................................................1

In truth the mastery of flying was the work of thousands of men this man a suggestion and that an

experiment, until at last only one vigorous intellectual effort was needed to finish the work. But the

inexorable injustice of the popular mind has decided that of all these thousands, one man, and that a man who

never flew, should be chosen as the discoverer, just as it has chosen to honour Watt as the discoverer of steam

and Stephenson of the steamengine. And surely of all honoured names none is so grotesquely and tragically

honoured as poor Filmer's, the timid, intellectual creature who solved the problem over which the world had

hung perplexed and a little fearful for so many generations, the man who pressed the button that has changed

peace and warfare and wellnigh every condition of human life and happiness. Never has that recurring

wonder of the littleness of the scientific man in the face of the greatness of his science found such an amazing

exemplification. Much concerning Filmer is, and must remain, profoundly obscureFilmers attract no

Boswellsbut the essential facts and the concluding scene are clear enough, and there are letters, and notes,

and casual allusions to piece the whole together. And this is the story one makes, putting this thing with that,

The first authentic trace of Filmer on the page of history is a document in which he applies for admission as a

paid student in physics to the Government laboratories at South Kensington, and therein he describes himself

as the son of a "military bootmaker" ("cobbler" in the vulgar tongue) of Dover, and lists his various

examination proofs of a high proficiency in chemistry and mathematics. With a certain want of dignity he

seeks to enhance these attainments by a profession of poverty and disadvantages, and he writes of the

laboratory as the "gaol" of his ambitions, a slip which reinforces his claim to have devoted himself

exclusively to the exact sciences. The document is endorsed in a manner that shows Filmer was admitted to

this coveted opportunity; but until quite recently no traces of his success in the Government institution could

It has now, however, been shown that in spite of his professed zeal for research, Filmer, before he had held

this scholarship a year, was tempted, by the possibility of a small increase in his immediate income, to

abandon it in order to become one of the ninepenceanhour computers employed by a wellknown

Professor in his vicarious conduct of those extensive researches of his in solar physicsresearches which are

still a matter of perplexity to astronomers. Afterwards, for the space of seven years, save for the pass lists of

the London University, in which he is seen to climb slowly to a double first class B.Sc., in mathematics and

chemistry, there is no evidence of how Filmer passed his life. No one knows how or where he lived, though it

seems highly probable that he continued to support himself by teaching while he prosecuted the studies

necessary for this distinction. And then, oddly enough, one finds him mentioned in the correspondence of

"You remember Filmer," Hicks writes to his friend Vance; "well, HE hasn't altered a bit, the same hostile

mumble and the nasty chinhow CAN a man contrive to be always three days from shaving? and a sort

of furtive air of being engaged in sneaking in front of one; even his coat and that frayed collar of his show no

further signs of the passing years. He was writing in the library and I sat down beside him in the name of

God's charity, whereupon he deliberately insulted me by covering up his memoranda. It seems he has some

brilliant research on hand that he suspects me of all peoplewith a Bodley Booklet aprinting!of stealing.

He has taken remarkable honours at the Universityhe went through them with a sort of hasty slobber, as

though he feared I might interrupt him before he had told me alland he spoke of taking his D.Sc. as one

might speak of taking a cab. And he asked what I was doingwith a sort of comparative accent, and his arm

was spread nervously, positively a protecting arm, over the paper that hid the precious ideahis one hopeful

"The thing's a Provincial professorling in the very act of budding, and I thank the Lord devoutly that but for

the precious gift of indolence I also might have gone this way to D.Sc. and destruction . . ."

A curious little vignette that I am inclined to think caught Filmer in or near the very birth of his discovery.

Hicks was wrong in anticipating a provincial professorship for Filmer. Our next glimpse of him is lecturing

on "rubber and rubber substitutes," to the Society of Artshe had become manager to a great

plasticsubstance manufactoryand at that time, it is now known, he was a member of the Aeronautical

Society, albeit he contributed nothing to the discussions of that body, preferring no doubt to mature his great

conception without external assistance. And within two years of that paper before the Society of Arts he was

hastily taking out a number of patents and proclaiming in various undignified ways the completion of the

divergent inquiries which made his flying machine possible. The first definite statement to that effect

appeared in a halfpenny evening paper through the agency of a man who lodged in the same house with

Filmer. His final haste after his long laborious secret patience seems to have been due to a needless panic,

Bootle, the notorious American scientific quack, having made an announcement that Filmer interpreted

Now what precisely was Filmer's idea? Really a very simple one. Before his time the pursuit of aeronautics

had taken two divergent lines, and had developed on the one hand balloonslarge apparatus lighter than air,

easy in ascent, and comparatively safe in descent, but floating helplessly before any breeze that took them;

and on the other, flying machines that flew only in theoryvast flat structures heavier than air, propelled and

kept up by heavy engines and for the most part smashing at the first descent. But, neglecting the fact that the

inevitable final collapse rendered them impossible, the weight of the flying machines gave them this

theoretical advantage, that they could go through the air against a wind, a necessary condition if aerial

navigation was to have any practical value. It is Filmer's particular merit that he perceived the way in which

the contrasted and hitherto incompatible merits of balloon and heavy flying machine might be combined in

one apparatus, which should be at choice either heavier or lighter than air. He took hints from the contractile

bladders of fish and the pneumatic cavities of birds. He devised an arrangement of contractile and absolutely

closed balloons which when expanded could lift the actual flying apparatus with ease, and when retracted by

the complicated "musculature" he wove about them, were withdrawn almost completely into the frame; and

he built the large framework which these balloons sustained, of hollow, rigid tubes, the air in which, by an

ingenious contrivance, was automatically pumped out as the apparatus fell, and which then remained

exhausted so long as the aeronaut desired. There were no wings or propellers to his machine, such as there

had been to all previous aeroplanes, and the only engine required was the compact and powerful little

appliance needed to contract the balloons. He perceived that such an apparatus as he had devised might rise

with frame exhausted and balloons expanded to a considerable height, might then contract its balloons and let

the air into its frame, and by an adjustment of its weights slide down the air in any desired direction. As it fell

it would accumulate velocity and at the same time lose weight, and the momentum accumulated by its

downrush could be utilised by means of a shifting of its weights to drive it up in the air again as the balloons

expanded. This conception, which is still the structural conception of all successful flying machines, needed,

however, a vast amount of toil upon its details before it could actually be realised, and such toil Filmeras

he was accustomed to tell the numerous interviewers who crowded upon him in the heyday of his

fame"ungrudgingly and unsparingly gave." His particular difficulty was the elastic lining of the contractile

balloon. He found he needed a new substance, and in the discovery and manufacture of that new substance he

had, as he never failed to impress upon the interviewers, "performed a far more arduous work than even in

But it must not be imagined that these interviews followed hard upon Filmer's proclamation of his invention.

An interval of nearly five years elapsed during which he timidly remained at his rubber factoryhe seems to

have been entirely dependent on his small income from this sourcemaking misdirected attempts to assure a

quite indifferent public that he really HAD invented what he had invented. He occupied the greater part of his

leisure in the composition of letters to the scientific and daily press, and so forth, stating precisely the net

result of his contrivances, and demanding financial aid. That alone would have sufficed for the suppression of

his letters. He spent such holidays as he could arrange in unsatisfactory interviews with the doorkeepers of

leading London papershe was singularly not adapted for inspiring hallporters with confidenceand he

positively attempted to induce the War Office to take up his work with him. There remains a confidential

letter from MajorGeneral Volleyfire to the Earl of Frogs. "The man's a crank and a bounder to boot," says

the MajorGeneral in his bluff, sensible, army way, and so left it open for the Japanese to secure, as they

subsequently did, the priority in this side of warfarea priority they still to our great discomfort retain.

And then by a stroke of luck the membrane Filmer had invented for his contractile balloon was discovered to

be useful for the valves of a new oilengine, and he obtained the means for making a trial model of his

invention. He threw up his rubber factory appointment, desisted from all further writing, and, with a certain

secrecy that seems to have been an inseparable characteristic of all his proceedings, set to work upon the

apparatus. He seems to have directed the making of its parts and collected most of it in a room in Shoreditch,

but its final putting together was done at Dymchurch, in Kent. He did not make the affair large enough to

carry a man, but he made an extremely ingenious use of what were then called the Marconi rays to control its

flight. The first flight of this first practicable flying machine took place over some fields near Burford Bridge,

near Hythe, in Kent, and Filmer followed and controlled its flight upon a specially constructed motor tricycle.

The flight was, considering all things, an amazing success. The apparatus was brought in a cart from

Dymchurch to Burford Bridge, ascended there to a height of nearly three hundred feet, swooped thence very

nearly back to Dymchurch, came about in its sweep, rose again, circled, and finally sank uninjured in a field

behind the Burford Bridge Inn. At its descent a curious thing happened. Filmer got off his tricycle, scrambled

over the intervening dyke, advanced perhaps twenty yards towards his triumph, threw out his arms in a

strange gesticulation, and fell down in a dead faint. Every one could then recall the ghastliness of his features

and all the evidences of extreme excitement they had observed throughout the trial, things they might

otherwise have forgotten. Afterwards in the inn he had an unaccountable gust of hysterical weeping.

Altogether there were not twenty witnesses of this affair, and those for the most part uneducated men. The

New Romney doctor saw the ascent but not the descent, his horse being frightened by the electrical apparatus

on Filmer's tricycle and giving him a nasty spill. Two members of the Kent constabulary watched the affair

from a cart in an unofficial spirit, and a grocer calling round the Marsh for orders and two lady cyclists seem

almost to complete the list of educated people. There were two reporters present, one representing a

Folkestone paper and the other being a fourthclass interviewer and "symposium" journalist, whose expenses

down, Filmer, anxious as ever for adequate advertisement and now quite realising the way in which

adequate advertisement may be obtainedhad paid. The latter was one of those writers who can throw a

convincing air of unreality over the most credible events, and his halffacetious account of the affair

appeared in the magazine page of a popular journal. But, happily for Filmer, this person's colloquial methods

were more convincing. He went to offer some further screed upon the subject to Banghurst, the proprietor of

the New Paper, and one of the ablest and most unscrupulous men in London journalism, and Banghurst

instantly seized upon the situation. The interviewer vanishes from the narrative, no doubt very doubtfully

remunerated, and Banghurst, Banghurst himself, double chin, grey twill suit, abdomen, voice, gestures and

all, appears at Dymchurch, following his large, unrivalled journalistic nose. He had seen the whole thing at a

At his touch, as it were, Filmer's longpent investigations exploded into fame. He instantly and most

magnificently was a Boom. One turns over the files of the journals of the year 1907 with a quite incredulous

recognition of how swift and flaming the boom of those days could be. The July papers know nothing of

flying, see nothing in flying, state by a most effective silence that men never would, could or should fly. In

August flying and Filmer and flying and parachutes and aerial tactics and the Japanese Government and

Filmer and again flying, shouldered the war in Yunnan and the gold mines of Upper Greenland off the

leading page. And Banghurst had given ten thousand pounds, and, further, Banghurst was giving five

thousand pounds, and Banghurst had devoted his wellknown, magnificent (but hitherto sterile) private

laboratories and several acres of land near his private residence on the Surrey hills to the strenuous and

violent completionBanghurst fashionof the lifesize practicable flying machine. Meanwhile, in the sight

of privileged multitudes in the walledgarden of the Banghurst town residence in Fulham, Filmer was

exhibited at weekly garden parties putting the working model through its paces. At enormous initial cost, but

with a final profit, the New Paper presented its readers with a beautiful photographic souvenir of the first of

Here again the correspondence of Arthur Hicks and his friend Vance comes to our aid.

"I saw Filmer in his glory," he writes, with just the touch of envy natural to his position as a poet passe. "The

man is brushed and shaved, dressed in the fashion of a RoyalInstitutionAfternoon Lecturer, the very

newest shape in frockcoats and long patent shoes, and altogether in a state of extraordinary streakiness

between an owlish great man and a scared abashed selfconscious bounder cruelly exposed. He hasn't a touch

of colour in the skin of his face, his head juts forward, and those queer little dark amber eyes of his watch

furtively round him for his fame. His clothes fit perfectly and yet sit upon him as though he had bought them

readymade. He speaks in a mumble still, but he says, you perceive indistinctly, enormous selfassertive

things, he backs into the rear of groups by instinct if Banghurst drops the line for a minute, and when he

walks across Banghurst's lawn one perceives him a little out of breath and going jerky, and that his weak

white hands are clenched. His is a state of tensionhorrible tension. And he is the Greatest Discoverer of

This or Any Agethe Greatest Discoverer of This or Any Age! What strikes one so forcibly about him is

that he didn't somehow quite expect it ever, at any rate, not at all like this. Banghurst is about everywhere, the

energetic M.C. of his great little catch, and I swear he will have every one down on his lawn there before he

has finished with the engine; he had bagged the prime minister yesterday, and he, bless his heart! didn't look

particularly outsize, on the very first occasion. Conceive it! Filmer! Our obscure unwashed Filmer, the Glory

of British science! Duchesses crowd upon him, beautiful, bold peeresses say in their beautiful, clear loud

voiceshave you noticed how penetrating the great lady is becoming nowadays?'Oh, Mr. Filmer, how

"Common men on the edge of things are too remote for the answer. One imagines something in the way of

that interview, 'toil ungrudgingly and unsparingly given, Madam, and, perhapsI don't knowbut perhaps

So far Hicks, and the photographic supplement to the New Paper is in sufficient harmony with the

description. In one picture the machine swings down towards the river, and the tower of Fulham church

appears below it through a gap in the elms, and in another, Filmer sits at his guiding batteries, and the great

and beautiful of the earth stand around him, with Banghurst massed modestly but resolutely in the rear. The

grouping is oddly apposite. Occluding much of Banghurst, and looking with a pensive, speculative

expression at Filmer, stands the Lady Mary Elkinghorn, still beautiful, in spite of the breath of scandal and

her eightandthirty years, the only person whose face does not admit a perception of the camera that was in

So much for the exterior facts of the story, but, after all, they are very exterior facts. About the real interest of

the business one is necessarily very much in the dark. How was Filmer feeling at the time? How much was a

certain unpleasant anticipation present inside that very new and fashionable frockcoat? He was in the

halfpenny, penny, sixpenny, and more expensive papers alike, and acknowledged by the whole world as

"the Greatest Discoverer of This or Any Age." He had invented a practicable flying machine, and every day

down among the Surrey hills the lifesized model was getting ready. And when it was ready, it followed as a

clear inevitable consequence of his having invented and made iteverybody in the world, indeed, seemed to

take it for granted; there wasn't a gap anywhere in that serried front of anticipationthat he would proudly

But we know now pretty clearly that simple pride and cheerfulness in such an act were singularly out of

harmony with Filmer's private constitution. It occurred to no one at the time, but there the fact is. We can

guess with some confidence now that it must have been drifting about in his mind a great deal during the day,

and, from a little note to his physician complaining of persistent insomnia, we have the soundest reason for

supposing it dominated his nights, the idea that it would be after all, in spite of his theoretical security, an

abominably sickening, uncomfortable, and dangerous thing for him to flap about in nothingness a thousand

feet or so in the air. It must have dawned upon him quite early in the period of being the Greatest Discoverer

of This or Any Age, the vision of doing this and that with an extensive void below. Perhaps somewhen in his

youth he had looked down a great height or fallen down in some excessively uncomfortable way; perhaps

some habit of sleeping on the wrong side had resulted in that disagreeable falling nightmare one knows, and

given him his horror; of the strength of that horror there remains now not a particle of doubt.

Apparently he had never weighed this duty of flying in his earlier days of research; the machine had been his

end, but now things were opening out beyond his end, and particularly this giddy whirl up above there. He

was a Discoverer and he had Discovered. But he was not a Flying Man, and it was only now that he was

beginning to perceive clearly that he was expected to fly. Yet, however much the thing was present in his

mind he gave no expression to it until the very end, and meanwhile he went to and fro from Banghurst's

magnificent laboratories, and was interviewed and lionised, and wore good clothes, and ate good food, and

lived in an elegant flat, enjoying a very abundant feast of such good, coarse, wholesome Fame and Success as

a man, starved for all his years as he had been starved, might be reasonably expected to enjoy.

After a time, the weekly gatherings in Fulham ceased. The model had failed one day just for a moment to

respond to Filmer's guidance, or he had been distracted by the compliments of an archbishop. At any rate, it

suddenly dug its nose into the air just a little too steeply as the archbishop was sailing through a Latin

quotation for all the world like an archbishop in a book, and it came down in the Fulham Road within three

yards of a 'bus horse. It stood for a second perhaps, astonishing and in its attitude astonished, then it

Filmer lost the end of the archiepiscopal compliment. He stood up and stared as his invention swooped out of

sight and reach of him. His long, white hands still gripped his useless apparatus. The archbishop followed his

Then came the crash and the shouts and uproar from the road to relieve Filmer's tension. "My God!" he

Every one else almost was staring to see where the machine had vanished, or rushing into the house.

The making of the big machine progressed all the more rapidly for this. Over its making presided Filmer,

always a little slow and very careful in his manner, always with a growing preoccupation in his mind. His

care over the strength and soundness of the apparatus was prodigious. The slightest doubt, and he delayed

everything until the doubtful part could be replaced. Wilkinson, his senior assistant, fumed at some of these

delays, which, he insisted, were for the most part unnecessary. Banghurst magnified the patient certitude of

Filmer in the New Paper, and reviled it bitterly to his wife, and MacAndrew, the second assistant, approved

Filmer's wisdom. "We're not wanting a fiasco, man," said MacAndrew. "He's perfectly well advised."

And whenever an opportunity arose Filmer would expound to Wilkinson and MacAndrew just exactly how

every part of the flying machine was to be controlled and worked, so that in effect they would be just as

capable, and even more capable, when at last the time came, of guiding it through the skies.

Now I should imagine that if Filmer had seen fit at this stage to define just what he was feeling, and to take a

definite line in the matter of his ascent, he might have escaped that painful ordeal quite easily. If he had had it

clearly in his mind he could have done endless things. He would surely have found no difficulty with a

specialist to demonstrate a weak heart, or something gastric or pulmonary, to stand in his waythat is the

line I am astonished he did not take,or he might, had he been man enough, have declared simply and

finally that he did not intend to do the thing. But the fact is, though the dread was hugely present in his mind,

the thing was by no means sharp and clear. I fancy that all through this period he kept telling himself that

when the occasion came he would find himself equal to it. He was like a man just gripped by a great illness,

who says he feels a little out of sorts, and expects to be better presently. Meanwhile he delayed the

completion of the machine, and let the assumption that he was going to fly it take root and flourish

exceedingly about him. He even accepted anticipatory compliments on his courage. And, barring this secret

squeamishness, there can be no doubt he found all the praise and distinction and fuss he got a delightful and

How THAT began was a subject of inexhaustible speculation to Hicks. Probably in the beginning she was

just a little "nice" to him with that impartial partiality of hers, and it may be that to her eyes, standing out

conspicuously as he did ruling his monster in the upper air, he had a distinction that Hicks was not disposed

to find. And somehow they must have had a moment of sufficient isolation, and the great Discoverer a

moment of sufficient courage for something just a little personal to be mumbled or blurted. However it began,

there is no doubt that it did begin, and presently became quite perceptible to a world accustomed to find in the

proceedings of the Lady Mary Elkinghorn a matter of entertainment. It complicated things, because the state

of love in such a virgin mind as Filmer's would brace his resolution, if not sufficiently, at any rate

considerably towards facing a danger he feared, and hampered him in such attempts at evasion as would

It remains a matter for speculation just how the Lady Mary felt for Filmer and just what she thought of him.

At thirtyeight one may have gathered much wisdom and still be not altogether wise, and the imagination

still functions actively enough in creating glamours and effecting the impossible. He came before her eyes as

a very central man, and that always counts, and he had powers, unique powers as it seemed, at any rate in the

air. The performance with the model had just a touch of the quality of a potent incantation, and women have

ever displayed an unreasonable disposition to imagine that when a man has powers he must necessarily have

Power. Given so much, and what was not good in Filmer's manner and appearance became an added merit.

He was modest, he hated display, but given an occasion where TRUE qualities are needed, thenthen one

The late Mrs. Bampton thought it wise to convey to Lady Mary her opinion that Filmer, all things considered,

was rather a "grub." "He's certainly not a sort of man I have ever met before," said the Lady Mary, with a

quite unruffled serenity. And Mrs. Bampton, after a swift, imperceptible glance at that serenity, decided that

so far as saying anything to Lady Mary went, she had done as much as could be expected of her. But she said

And at last, without any undue haste or unseemliness, the day dawned, the great day, when Banghurst had

promised his public the world in factthat flying should be finally attained and overcome. Filmer saw it

dawn, watched even in the darkness before it dawned, watched its stars fade and the grey and pearly pinks

give place at last to the clear blue sky of a sunny, cloudless day. He watched it from the window of his

bedroom in the newbuilt wing of Banghurst's Tudor house. And as the stars were overwhelmed and the

shapes and substances of things grew into being out of the amorphous dark, he must have seen more and

more distinctly the festive preparations beyond the beech clumps near the green pavilion in the outer park, the

three stands for the privileged spectators, the raw, new fencing of the enclosure, the sheds and workshops, the

Venetian masts and fluttering flags that Banghurst had considered essential, black and limp in the breezeless

dawn, and amidst all these things a great shape covered with tarpauling. A strange and terrible portent for

humanity was that shape, a beginning that must surely spread and widen and change and dominate all the

affairs of men, but to Filmer it is very doubtful whether it appeared in anything but a narrow and personal

light. Several people heard him pacing in the small hoursfor the vast place was packed with guests by a

proprietor editor who, before all understood compression. And about five o'clock, if not before, Filmer left

his room and wandered out of the sleeping house into the park, alive by that time with sunlight and birds and

squirrels and the fallow deer. MacAndrew, who was also an early riser, met him near the machine, and they

It is doubtful if Filmer took any breakfast, in spite of the urgency of Banghurst. So soon as the guests began

to be about in some number he seems to have retreated to his room. Thence about ten he went into the

shrubbery, very probably because he had seen the Lady Mary Elkinghorn there. She was walking up and

down, engaged in conversation with her old school friend, Mrs. BrewisCraven, and although Filmer had

never met the latter lady before, he joined them and walked beside them for some time. There were several

silences in spite of the Lady Mary's brilliance. The situation was a difficult one, and Mrs. BrewisCraven did

not master its difficulty. "He struck me," she said afterwards with a luminous selfcontradiction, "as a very

unhappy person who had something to say, and wanted before all things to be helped to say it. But how was

At halfpast eleven the enclosures for the public in the outer park were crammed, there was an intermittent

stream of equipages along the belt which circles the outer park, and the house party was dotted over the lawn

and shrubbery and the corner of the inner park, in a series of brilliantly attired knots, all making for the flying

machine. Filmer walked in a group of three with Banghurst, who was supremely and conspicuously happy,

and Sir Theodore Hickle, the president of the Aeronautical Society. Mrs. Banghurst was close behind with the

Lady Mary Elkinghorn, Georgina Hickle, and the Dean of Stays. Banghurst was large and copious in speech,

and such interstices as he left were filled in by Hickle with complimentary remarks to Filmer. And Filmer

walked between them saying not a word except by way of unavoidable reply. Behind, Mrs. Banghurst

listened to the admirably suitable and shapely conversation of the Dean with that fluttered attention to the

ampler clergy ten years of social ascent and ascendency had not cured in her; and the Lady Mary watched, no

doubt with an entire confidence in the world's disillusionment, the drooping shoulders of the sort of man she

There was some cheering as the central party came into view of the enclosures, but it was not very unanimous

nor invigorating cheering. They were within fifty yards of the apparatus when Filmer took a hasty glance

over his shoulder to measure the distance of the ladies behind them, and decided to make the first remark he

had initiated since the house had been left. His voice was just a little hoarse, and he cut in on Banghurst in

"A queer feeling." Filmer made to move on, but Banghurst was immovable. "I don't know. I may be better in

"My dear!" he said, as Mrs. Banghurst came up with them, "Filmer says he isn't feeling WELL."

"A little queer," exclaimed Filmer, avoiding the Lady Mary's eyes. "It may pass off"

"In any case," said Banghurst, "the ascent must be made. Perhaps if you were to sit down somewhere for a

There was a second pause. Banghurst's eye rested in scrutiny on Filmer, and then swept the sample of public

"It's unfortunate," said Sir Theodore Hickle; but stillI suppose Your assistantsOf course, if you feel

"But if Mr. Filmer's nerve is runIt might even be dangerous for him to attempt" Hickle coughed.

"It's just because it's dangerous," began the Lady Mary, and felt she had made her point of view and Filmer's

"I feel I ought to go up," he said, regarding the ground. He looked up and met the Lady Mary's eyes. "I want

to go up," he said, and smiled whitely at her. He turned towards Banghurst. "If I could just sit down

Banghurst, at least, was beginning to understand the case. "Come into my little room in the green pavilion,"

Filmer turned his face to the Lady Mary Elkinghorn again. "I shall be all right in five minutes," he said. "I'm

The Lady Mary Elkinghorn smiled at him. "I couldn't think" he said to Hickle, and obeyed the compulsion

"He's certainly a highly nervous type," said the Dean, whose weakness it was to regard the whole world,

"Of course," said Hickle, "it isn't absolutely necessary for him to go up because he has invented"

"How COULD he avoid it?" asked the Lady Mary, with the faintest shadow of scorn.

"It's certainly most unfortunate if he's going to be ill now," said Mrs. Banghurst a little severely.

"He's not going to be ill," said the Lady Mary, and certainly she had met Filmer's eye.

"YOU'LL be all right," said Banghurst, as they went towards the pavilion. "All you want is a nip of brandy. It

ought to be you, you know. You'll beyou'd get it rough, you know, if you let another man"

"Oh, I want to go," said Filmer. "I shall be all right. As a matter of fact I'm almost inclined NOW. No! I

Banghurst took him into the little room and routed out an empty decanter. He departed in search of a supply.

The history of those five minutes cannot be written. At intervals Filmer's face could be seen by the people on

the easternmost of the stands erected for spectators, against the window pane peering out, and then it would

recede and fade. Banghurst vanished shouting behind the grand stand, and presently the butler appeared going

The apartment in which Filmer came to his last solution was a pleasant little room very simply furnished with

green furniture and an old bureaufor Banghurst was simple in all his private ways. It was hung with little

engravings after Morland and it had a shelf of books. But as it happened, Banghurst had left a rook rifle he

sometimes played with on the top of the desk, and on the corner of the mantelshelf was a tin with three or

four cartridges remaining in it. As Filmer went up and down that room wrestling with his intolerable dilemma

he went first towards the neat little rifle athwart the blottingpad and then towards the neat little red label

Nobody seems to have connected the report with him, though the gun, being fired in a confined space, must

have sounded loud, and there were several people in the billiardroom, separated from him only by a

lathandplaster partition. But directly Banghurst's butler opened the door and smelt the sour smell of the

smoke, he knew, he says, what had happened. For the servants at least of Banghurst's household had guessed

All through that trying afternoon Banghurst behaved as he held a man should behave in the presence of

hopeless disaster, and his guests for the most part succeeded in not insisting upon the factthough to conceal

their perception of it altogether was impossiblethat Banghurst had been pretty elaborately and completely

swindled by the deceased. The public in the enclosure, Hicks told me, dispersed "like a party that has been

ducking a welsher," and there wasn't a soul in the train to London, it seems, who hadn't known all along that

flying was a quite impossible thing for man. "But he might have tried it," said many, "after carrying the thing

In the evening, when he was comparatively alone, Banghurst broke down and went on like a man of clay. I

have been told he wept, which must have made an imposing scene, and he certainly said Filmer had ruined

his life, and offered and sold the whole apparatus to MacAndrew for halfacrown. "I've been thinking"

The next morning the name of Filmer was, for the first time, less conspicuous in the New Paper than in any

other daily paper in the world. The rest of the world's instructors, with varying emphasis, according to their

dignity and the degree of competition between themselves and the New Paper, proclaimed the "Entire Failure

of the New Flying Machine," and "Suicide of the Impostor." But in the district of North Surrey the reception

Overnight Wilkinson and MacAndrew had fallen into violent argument on the exact motives of their

"The man was certainly a poor, cowardly body, but so far as his science went he was NO impostor," said

MacAndrew, "and I'm prepared to give that proposition a very practical demonstration, Mr. Wilkinson, so

soon as we've got the place a little more to ourselves. For I've no faith in all this publicity for experimental

And to that end, while all the world was reading of the certain failure of the new flying machine, MacAndrew

was soaring and curvetting with great amplitude and dignity over the Epsom and Wimbledon divisions; and

Banghurst, restored once more to hope and energy, and regardless of public security and the Board of Trade,

was pursuing his gyrations and trying to attract his attention, on a motor car and in his pyjamas he had

caught sight of the ascent when pulling up the blind of his bedroom windowequipped, among other things,

with a film camera that was subsequently discovered to be jammed. And Filmer was lying on the billiard

I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring

little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket trick,

packs of cards that LOOKED all right, and all that sort of thing, but never had I thought of going in until one

day, almost without warning, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so conducted himself

that there was nothing for it but to take him in. I had not thought the place was there, to tell the trutha

modestsized frontage in Regent Street, between the picture shop and the place where the chicks run about

just out of patent incubators, but there it was sure enough. I had fancied it was down nearer the Circus, or

round the corner in Oxford Street, or even in Holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible it had

been, with something of the mirage in its position; but here it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of

"If I was rich," said Gip, dabbing a finger at the Disappearing Egg, "I'd buy myself that. And that"which

was The Crying Baby, Very Human and that," which was a mystery, and called, so a neat card asserted,

"Anything," said Gip, "will disappear under one of those cones. I have read about it in a book.

"And there, dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny, only they've put it this way up so's we can't see how it's

Gip, dear boy, inherits his mother's breeding, and he did not propose to enter the shop or worry in any way;

only, you know, quite unconsciously he lugged my finger doorward, and he made his interest clear.

"If you had that?" I said; at which promising inquiry he looked up with a sudden radiance.

"It's less than a hundred days to your birthday, Gibbles," I said, and laid my hand on the doorhandle.

Gip made no answer, but his grip tightened on my finger, and so we came into the shop.

It was no common shop this; it was a magic shop, and all the prancing precedence Gip would have taken in

the matter of mere toys was wanting. He left the burthen of the conversation to me.

It was a little, narrow shop, not very well lit, and the doorbell pinged again with a plaintive note as we

closed it behind us. For a moment or so we were alone and could glance about us. There was a tiger in

papiermache on the glass case that covered the low countera grave, kindeyed tiger that waggled his

head in a methodical manner; there were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding magic cards, a stock of

magic fishbowls in various sizes, and an immodest magic hat that shamelessly displayed its springs. On the

floor were magic mirrors; one to draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs,

and one to make you short and fat like a draught; and while we were laughing at these the shopman, as I

At any rate, there he was behind the countera curious, sallow, dark man, with one ear larger than the other

"What can we have the pleasure?" he said, spreading his long, magic fingers on the glass case; and so with a

"Um!" said the shopman, and scratched his head for a moment as if thinking. Then, quite distinctly, he drew

The action was unexpected. I had seen the trick done at entertainments endless times beforeit's part of the

Gip stretched out his disengaged hand to take this object and found merely a blank palm.

"We make no charge for glass balls," said the shopman politely. "We get them,"he picked one out of his

elbow as he spoke"free." He produced another from the back of his neck, and laid it beside its predecessor

on the counter. Gip regarded his glass ball sagely, then directed a look of inquiry at the two on the counter,

"You may have those too," said the shopman, "and, if you DON'T mind, one from my mouth. SO!"

Gip counselled me mutely for a moment, and then in a profound silence put away the four balls, resumed my

I laughed in the manner of one who subscribes to a jest. "Instead of going to the wholesale shop," I said. "Of

"In a way," the shopman said. "Though we pay in the end. But not so heavilyas people suppose. . . . Our

larger tricks, and our daily provisions and all the other things we want, we get out of that hat. . . And you

know, sir, if you'll excuse my saying it, there ISN'T a wholesale shop, not for Genuine Magic goods, sir. I

don't know if you noticed our inscriptionthe Genuine Magic shop." He drew a businesscard from his

cheek and handed it to me. "Genuine," he said, with his finger on the word, and added, "There is absolutely

He turned to Gip with a smile of remarkable affability. "You, you know, are the Right Sort of Boy."

I was surprised at his knowing that, because, in the interests of discipline, we keep it rather a secret even at

home; but Gip received it in unflinching silence, keeping a steadfast eye on him.

And, as if by way of illustration, there came a rattling at the door, and a squeaking little voice could be faintly

heard. "Nyar! I WARN 'a go in there, dadda, I WARN 'a go in there. Nyaaah!" and then the accents of a

downtrodden parent, urging consolations and propitiations. "It's locked, Edward," he said.

"It is, sir," said the shopman, "alwaysfor that sort of child," and as he spoke we had a glimpse of the other

youngster, a little, white face, pallid from sweeteating and oversapid food, and distorted by evil passions, a

ruthless little egotist, pawing at the enchanted pane. "It's no good, sir," said the shopman, as I moved, with

my natural helpfulness, doorward, and presently the spoilt child was carried off howling.

"Magic!" said the shopman, with a careless wave of the hand, and behold! sparks of coloured fire flew out of

"You were saying," he said, addressing himself to Gip, "before you came in, that you would like one of our

And leaning over the counterhe really had an extraordinarily long bodythis amazing person produced

the article in the customary conjurer's manner. "Paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the

springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a stringbox, from which he drew an unending thread, which

when he had tied his parcel he bit offand, it seemed to me, swallowed the ball of string. And then he lit a

candle at the nose of one of the ventriloquist's dummies, stuck one of his fingers (which had become

sealingwax red) into the flame, and so sealed the parcel. "Then there was the Disappearing Egg," he

remarked, and produced one from within my coatbreast and packed it, and also The Crying Baby, Very

Human. I handed each parcel to Gip as it was ready, and he clasped them to his chest.

He said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms was eloquent. He was the playground of

unspeakable emotions. These, you know, were REAL Magics. Then, with a start, I discovered something

moving about in my hatsomething soft and jumpy. I whipped it off, and a ruffled pigeonno doubt a

confederatedropped out and ran on the counter, and went, I fancy, into a cardboard box behind the

"Tut, tut!" said the shopman, dexterously relieving me of my headdress; "careless bird, andas I

He shook my hat, and shook out into his extended hand two or three eggs, a large marble, a watch, about

halfadozen of the inevitable glass balls, and then crumpled, crinkled paper, more and more and more,

talking all the time of the way in which people neglect to brush their hats INSIDE as well as out, politely, of

course, but with a certain personal application. "All sorts of things accumulate, sir. . . . Not YOU, of course,

in particular. . . . Nearly every customer. . . . Astonishing what they carry about with them. . . ." The crumpled

paper rose and billowed on the counter more and more and more, until he was nearly hidden from us, until he

was altogether hidden, and still his voice went on and on. "We none of us know what the fair semblance of a

human being may conceal, sir. Are we all then no better than brushed exteriors, whited sepulchres"

His voice stoppedexactly like when you hit a neighbour's gramophone with a wellaimed brick, the same

instant silence, and the rustle of the paper stopped, and everything was still. . . .

I stared at Gip, and Gip stared at me, and there were our distortions in the magic mirrors, looking very rum,

"I think we'll go now," I said. "Will you tell me how much all this comes to? . . . .

"I say," I said, on a rather louder note, "I want the bill; and my hat, please."

I led Gip round the headwagging tiger, and what do you think there was behind the counter? No one at all!

Only my hat on the floor, and a common conjurer's lopeared white rabbit lost in meditation, and looking as

stupid and crumpled as only a conjurer's rabbit can do. I resumed my hat, and the rabbit lolloped a lollop or

"So should I," I said to myself, "if the counter wouldn't suddenly extend itself to shut one off from the door."

But I didn't call Gip's attention to that. "Pussy!" he said, with a hand out to the rabbit as it came lolloping past

us; "Pussy, do Gip a magic!" and his eyes followed it as it squeezed through a door I had certainly not

remarked a moment before. Then this door opened wider, and the man with one ear larger than the other

appeared again. He was smiling still, but his eye met mine with something between amusement and defiance.

"You'd like to see our showroom, sir," he said, with an innocent suavity. Gip tugged my finger forward. I

glanced at the counter and met the shopman's eye again. I was beginning to think the magic just a little too

genuine. "We haven't VERY much time," I said. But somehow we were inside the showroom before I could

"All goods of the same quality," said the shopman, rubbing his flexible hands together, "and that is the Best.

Nothing in the place that isn't genuine Magic, and warranted thoroughly rum. Excuse me, sir!"

I felt him pull at something that clung to my coatsleeve, and then I saw he held a little, wriggling red demon

by the tailthe little creature bit and fought and tried to get at his handand in a moment he tossed it

carelessly behind a counter. No doubt the thing was only an image of twisted indiarubber, but for the

moment! And his gesture was exactly that of a man who handles some petty biting bit of vermin. I glanced

at Gip, but Gip was looking at a magic rockinghorse. I was glad he hadn't seen the thing. "I say," I said, in an

undertone, and indicating Gip and the red demon with my eyes, "you haven't many things like THAT about,

"None of ours! Probably brought it with you," said the shopman also in an undertone, and with a more

dazzling smile than ever. "Astonishing what people WILL carry about with them unawares!" And then to

He turned to this astonishing tradesman with mingled confidence and respect. "Is that a Magic Sword?" he

"A Magic Toy Sword. It neither bends, breaks, nor cuts the fingers. It renders the bearer invincible in battle

against any one under eighteen. Halfacrown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on

cards are for juvenile knightserrant and very useful shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of

I tried to find out what they cost, but the shopman did not heed me. He had got Gip now; he had got him

away from my finger; he had embarked upon the exposition of all his confounded stock, and nothing was

going to stop him. Presently I saw with a qualm of distrust and something very like jealousy that Gip had

hold of this person's finger as usually he has hold of mine. No doubt the fellow was interesting, I thought, and

I wandered after them, saying very little, but keeping an eye on this prestidigital fellow. After all, Gip was

enjoying it. And no doubt when the time came to go we should be able to go quite easily.

It was a long, rambling place, that showroom, a gallery broken up by stands and stalls and pillars, with

archways leading off to other departments, in which the queerestlooking assistants loafed and stared at one,

and with perplexing mirrors and curtains. So perplexing, indeed, were these that I was presently unable to

The shopman showed Gip magic trains that ran without steam or clockwork, just as you set the signals, and

then some very, very valuable boxes of soldiers that all came alive directly you took off the lid and said. I

myself haven't a very quick ear and it was a tonguetwisting sound, but Giphe has his mother's eargot it

in no time. "Bravo!" said the shopman, putting the men back into the box unceremoniously and handing it to

Gip. "Now," said the shopman, and in a moment Gip had made them all alive again.

"We'll take that box," said I, "unless you charge its full value. In which case it would need a Trust

"Dear heart! NO!" and the shopman swept the little men back again, shut the lid, waved the box in the air,

and there it was, in brown paper, tied up andWITH GIP'S FULL NAME AND ADDRESS ON THE

After that he fell to showing Gip tricks, odd tricks, and still odder the way they were done. He explained

them, he turned them inside out, and there was the dear little chap nodding his busy bit of a head in the sagest

I did not attend as well as I might. "Hey, presto!" said the Magic Shopman, and then would come the clear,

small "Hey, presto!" of the boy. But I was distracted by other things. It was being borne in upon me just how

tremendously rum this place was; it was, so to speak, inundated by a sense of rumness. There was something

a little rum about the fixtures even, about the ceiling, about the floor, about the casually distributed chairs. I

had a queer feeling that whenever I wasn't looking at them straight they went askew, and moved about, and

played a noiseless pussinthecorner behind my back. And the cornice had a serpentine design with

Then abruptly my attention was caught by one of the oddlooking assistants. He was some way off and

evidently unaware of my presence I saw a sort of threequarter length of him over a pile of toys and

through an archand, you know, he was leaning against a pillar in an idle sort of way doing the most horrid

things with his features! The particular horrid thing he did was with his nose. He did it just as though he was

idle and wanted to amuse himself. First of all it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out like

a telescope, and then out it flew and became thinner and thinner until it was like a long, red, flexible whip.

Like a thing in a nightmare it was! He flourished it about and flung it forth as a flyfisher flings his line.

My instant thought was that Gip mustn't see him. I turned about, and there was Gip quite preoccupied with

the shopman, and thinking no evil. They were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was standing on a

And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped the big drum over him. I saw what

was up directly. "Take that off," I cried, "this instant! You'll frighten the boy. Take it off!"

The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the big cylinder towards me to show its

emptiness. And the little stool was vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared? . . .

You know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand out of the unseen and grips your heart

about. You know it takes your common self away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither slow nor hasty,

"You see," he said, still displaying the drum's interior, "there is no deception"

I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement. I snatched again, and he turned

from me and pushed open a door to escape. "Stop!" I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after himinto

I was in Regent Street, and I had collided with a decentlooking working man; and a yard away, perhaps, and

looking a little perplexed with himself, was Gip. There was some sort of apology, and then Gip had turned

and come to me with a bright little smile, as though for a moment he had missed me.

For the second I was rather at a loss. I stared round to see the door of the magic shop, and, behold, it was not

there! There was no door, no shop, nothing, only the common pilaster between the shop where they sell

I did the only thing possible in that mental tumult; I walked straight to the kerbstone and held up my umbrella

I helped him in, recalled my address with an effort, and got in also. Something unusual proclaimed itself in

my tailcoat pocket, and I felt and discovered a glass ball. With a petulant expression I flung it into the street.

I came round with that to the problem of just how the whole thing had seemed to him. He looked completely

undamagedso far, good; he was neither scared nor unhinged, he was simply tremendously satisfied with

He received this with his usual stoicism, and for a moment I was sorry I was his father and not his mother,

and so couldn't suddenly there, coram publico, in our hansom, kiss him. After all, I thought, the thing wasn't

But it was only when we opened the parcels that I really began to be reassured. Three of them contained

boxes of soldiers, quite ordinary lead soldiers, but of so good a quality as to make Gip altogether forget that

originally these parcels had been Magic Tricks of the only genuine sort, and the fourth contained a kitten, a

I saw this unpacking with a sort of provisional relief. I hung about in the nursery for quite an unconscionable

That happened six months ago. And now I am beginning to believe it is all right. The kitten had only the

magic natural to all kittens, and the soldiers seem as steady a company as any colonel could desire. And

But I went so far as this one day. I said, "How would you like your soldiers to come alive, Gip, and march

I displayed no unbecoming surprise, and since then I have taken occasion to drop in upon him once or twice,

unannounced, when the soldiers were about, but so far I have never discovered them performing in anything

There's also a question of finance. I have an incurable habit of paying bills. I have been up and down Regent

Street several times, looking for that shop. I am inclined to think, indeed, that in that matter honour is

satisfied, and that, since Gip's name and address are known to them, I may very well leave it to these people,

Towards midday the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very

broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the

fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and

rode to a little eminence set with olivedun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little

For a space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. It spread remoter and remoter, with

only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless

ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the

further hills hills it might be of a greener kindand above them invisibly supported, and seeming indeed

to hang in the blue, were the snowclad summits of mountains that grew larger and bolder to the

northwestward as the sides of the valley drew together. And westward the valley opened until a distant

darkness under the sky told where the forests began. But the three men looked neither east nor west, but only

The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "Nowhere," he said, with a sigh of disappointment

"Even then they can't go fast. They've got no beast but the mule, and all today the girl's foot has been

The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him. "Do you think I haven't seen that?" he

The gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impassively. "They can't be over the valley," he said. "If we ride

"Curse all white horses!" said the man with the silver bridle, and turned to scan the beast his curse included.

The two others stared again across the valley for a space. The gaunt man passed the back of his hand across

"Come up!" said the man who owned the silver bridle, suddenly. The little man started and jerked his rein,

and the horse hoofs of the three made a multitudinous faint pattering upon the withered grass as they turned

They rode cautiously down the long slope before them, and so came through a waste of prickly, twisted

bushes and strange dry shapes of horny branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below. And

there the trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this scorched dead straw that lay

upon the ground. Still, by hard scanning, by leaning beside the horses' necks and pausing ever and again,

There were trodden places, bent and broken blades of the coarse grass, and ever and again the sufficient

intimation of a footmark. And once the leader saw a brown smear of blood where the halfcaste girl may

The gaunt man checked his leader's tracking, and the little man on the white horse rode behind, a man lost in

a dream. They rode one after another, the man with the silver bridle led the way, and they spoke never a

word. After a time it came to the little man on the white horse that the world was very still. He started out of

his dream. Besides the little noises of their horses and equipment, the whole great valley kept the brooding

Before him went his master and his fellow, each intently leaning forward to the left, each impassively moving

with the paces of his horse; their shadows went before themstill, noiseless, tapering attendants; and nearer

a crouched cool shape was his own. He looked about him. What was it had gone? Then he remembered the

reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles.

And, moreover? There was no breeze. That was it! What a vast, still place it was, a monotonous afternoon

slumber. And the sky open and blank, except for a sombre veil of haze that had gathered in the upper valley.

He straightened his back, fretted with his bridle, puckered his lips to whistle, and simply sighed. He turned in

his saddle for a time, and stared at the throat of the mountain gorge out of which they had come. Blank!

Blank slopes on either side, with never a sign of a decent beast or treemuch less a man. What a land it was!

It filled him with a momentary pleasure to see a wry stick of purple black flash out into the form of a snake,

and vanish amidst the brown. After all, the infernal valley WAS alive. And then, to rejoice him still more,

came a little breath across his face, a whisper that came and went, the faintest inclination of a stiff

blackantlered bush upon a little crest, the first intimations of a possible breeze. Idly he wetted his finger, and

He pulled up sharply to avoid a collision with the gaunt man, who had stopped at fault upon the trail. Just at

For a time he forced an interest in the tracking. Then, as they rode on again, he studied his master's shadow

and hat and shoulder, appearing and disappearing behind the gaunt man's nearer contours. They had ridden

four days out of the very limits of the world into this desolate place, short of water, with nothing but a strip of

dried meat under their saddles, over rocks and mountains, where surely none but these fugitives had ever

And all this was for a girl, a mere wilful child! And the man had whole cityfuls of people to do his basest

biddinggirls, women! Why in the name of passionate folly THIS one in particular? asked the little man,

and scowled at the world, and licked his parched lips with a blackened tongue. It was the way of the master,

His eye caught a whole row of high plumed canes bending in unison, and then the tails of silk that hung

before his neck flapped and fell. The breeze was growing stronger. Somehow it took the stiff stillness out of

And as he spoke a yellow animal crested a rise and came bearing down upon them. It was a big wild dog,

coming before the wind, tongue out, at a steady pace, and running with such an intensity of purpose that he

did not seem to see the horsemen he approached. He ran with his nose up, following, it was plain, neither

scent nor quarry. As he drew nearer the little man felt for his sword. "He's mad," said the gaunt rider.

The dog came on. Then when the little man's blade was already out, it swerved aside and went panting by

them and past. The eyes of the little man followed its flight. "There was no foam," he said. For a space the

man with the silverstudded bridle stared up the valley. "Oh, come on!" he cried at last. "What does it

The little man left the insoluble mystery of a dog that fled from nothing but the wind, and lapsed into

profound musings on human character. "Come on!" he whispered to himself. "Why should it be given to one

man to say 'Come on!' with that stupendous violence of effect. Always, all his life, the man with the silver

bridle has been saying that. If _I_ said it!" thought the little man. But people marvelled when the master

was disobeyed even in the wildest things. This halfcaste girl seemed to him, seemed to every one,

madblasphemous almost. The little man, by way of comparison, reflected on the gaunt rider with the

scarred lip, as stalwart as his master, as brave and, indeed, perhaps braver, and yet for him there was

Certain sensations of the hands and knees called the little man back to more immediate things. He became

aware of something. He rode up beside his gaunt fellow. "Do you notice the horses?" he said in an undertone.

"They don't like this wind," said the little man, and dropped behind as the man with the silver bridle turned

They rode on again for a space in silence. The foremost two rode downcast upon the trail, the hindmost man

watched the haze that crept down the vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the wind grew

in strength moment by moment. Far away on the left he saw a line of dark bulkswild hog perhaps,

galloping down the valley, but of that he said nothing, nor did he remark again upon the uneasiness of the

And then he saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great shining white ball like a gigantic head of

thistledown, that drove before the wind athwart the path. These balls soared high in the air, and dropped and

rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on and passed, but at the sight of them the restlessness of the

Then presently he saw that more of these drifting globesand then soon very many morewere hurrying

They became aware of a squealing. Athwart the path a huge boar rushed, turning his head but for one instant

to glance at them, and then hurling on down the valley again. And at that, all three stopped and sat in their

But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of them. It was really not an even sphere at all,

but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jellyfish, as it were, but rolling

over and over as it advanced, and trailing long, cobwebby threads and streamers that floated in its wake.

"Curse it!" cried the leader. "The air's full of it up there. If it keeps on at this pace long, it will stop us

An instinctive feeling, such as lines out a herd of deer at the approach of some ambiguous thing, prompted

them to turn their horses to the wind, ride forward for a few paces, and stare at that advancing multitude of

floating masses. They came on before the wind with a sort of smooth swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly,

sinking to earth, rebounding high, soaringall with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate assurance.

Right and left of the horsemen the pioneers of this strange army passed. At one that rolled along the ground,

breaking shapelessly and trailing out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and bands, all three horses began

to shy and dance. The master was seized with a sudden unreasonable impatience. He cursed the drifting

globes roundly. "Get on!" he cried; "get on! What do these things matter? How CAN they matter? Back to the

He shouted aloud with rage. "I will follow that trail, I tell you!" he cried. "Where is the trail?"

He gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the grass. A long and clinging thread fell

across his face, a grey streamer dropped about his bridlearm, some big, active thing with many legs ran

down the back of his head. He looked up to discover one of those grey masses anchored as it were above him

by these things and flapping out ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes, about but noiselessly.

He had an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of long, manyjointed limbs hauling at

their mooring ropes to bring the thing down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing horse

with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat of a sword smote his back, and a blade flashed

overhead and cut the drifting balloon of spiderweb free, and the whole mass lifted softly and drove clear and

"Spiders!" cried the voice of the gaunt man. "The things are full of big spiders! Look, my lord!"

The master found himself staring down at a red, smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial

obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore

down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to

What happened then was like the confusion of a battle. The man with the silver bridle saw the little man go

past him slashing furiously at imaginary cobwebs, saw him cannon into the horse of the gaunt man and hurl it

and its rider to earth. His own horse went a dozen paces before he could rein it in. Then he looked up to avoid

imaginary dangers, and then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man standing and

slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick

and fast as thistledown on waste land on a windy day in July, the cobweb masses were coming on.

The little man had dismounted, but he dared not release his horse. He was endeavouring to lug the struggling

brute back with the strength of one arm, while with the other he slashed aimlessly, The tentacles of a second

grey mass had entangled themselves with the struggle, and this second grey mass came to its moorings, and

The master set his teeth, gripped his bridle, lowered his head, and spurred his horse forward. The horse on the

ground rolled over, there were blood and moving shapes upon the flanks, and the gaunt man, suddenly

leaving it, ran forward towards his master, perhaps ten paces. His legs were swathed and encumbered with

grey; he made ineffectual movements with his sword. Grey streamers waved from him; there was a thin veil

of grey across his face. With his left hand he beat at something on his body, and suddenly he stumbled and

fell. He struggled to rise, and fell again, and suddenly, horribly, began to howl, "Ohohoo, ohooh!"

As he strove to force his horse nearer to this gesticulating, screaming grey object that struggled up and down,

there came a clatter of hoofs, and the little man, in act of mounting, swordless, balanced on his belly athwart

the white horse, and clutching its mane, whirled past. And again a clinging thread of grey gossamer swept

across the master's face. All about him, and over him, it seemed this drifting, noiseless cobweb circled and

To the day of his death he never knew just how the event of that moment happened. Did he, indeed, turn his

horse, or did it really of its own accord stampede after its fellow? Suffice it that in another second he was

galloping full tilt down the valley with his sword whirling furiously overhead. And all about him on the

quickening breeze, the spiders' airships, their air bundles and air sheets, seemed to him to hurry in a

Clatter, clatter, thud, thudthe man with the silver bridle rode, heedless of his direction, with his fearful face

looking up now right, now left, and his sword arm ready to slash. And a few hundred yards ahead of him,

with a tail of torn cobweb trailing behind him, rode the little man on the white horse, still but imperfectly in

the saddle. The reeds bent before them, the wind blew fresh and strong, over his shoulder the master could

He was so intent to escape the spiders' webs that only as his horse gathered together for a leap did he realise

the ravine ahead. And then he reaIised it only to misunderstand and interfere. He was leaning forward on his

But if in his excitement he had failed to leap, at any rate he had not forgotten how to fall. He was horseman

again in midair. He came off clear with a mere bruise upon his shoulder, and his horse rolled, kicking

spasmodic legs, and lay still. But the master's sword drove its point into the hard soil, and snapped clean

across, as though Chance refused him any longer as her Knight, and the splintered end missed his face by an

He was on his feet in a moment, breathlessly scanning the onrushing spiderwebs. For a moment he was

minded to run, and then thought of the ravine, and turned back. He ran aside once to dodge one drifting

terror, and then he was swiftly clambering down the precipitous sides, and out of the touch of the gale.

There under the lee of the dry torrent's steeper banks he might crouch, and watch these strange, grey masses

pass and pass in safety till the wind fell, and it became possible to escape. And there for a long time he

crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged masses trail their streamers across his narrowed sky.

Once a stray spider fell into the ravine close beside hima full foot it measured from leg to leg, and its body

was half a man's hand and after he had watched its monstrous alacrity of search and escape for a little

while, and tempted it to bite his broken sword, he lifted up his ironheeled boot and smashed it into a pulp.

Then presently, when he was surer these spider swarms could not drop into the ravine, he found a place

where he could sit down, and sat and fell into deep thought and began after his manner to gnaw his knuckles

and bite his nails. And from this he was moved by the coming of the man with the white horse.

He heard him long before he saw him, as a clattering of hoofs, stumbling footsteps, and a reassuring voice.

Then the little man appeared, a rueful figure, still with a tail of white cobweb trailing behind him. They

approached each other without speaking, without a salutation. The little man was fatigued and shamed to the

pitch of hopeless bitterness, and came to a stop at last, face to face with his seated master. The latter winced a

little under his dependant's eye. "Well?" he said at last, with no pretence of authority.

The other gnawed his knuckle through some meditative moments, with his eye on his inferior.

"A coward possibly. There is a limit beyond which every man must fear. That I have learnt at last. But not

"I never could have dreamt you would have left him. He saved your life two minutes before. . . . Why are you

"No man calls me a coward," he said. "No. A broken sword is better than none. . . . One spavined white horse

cannot be expected to carry two men a four days' journey. I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be

helped. You begin to understand me? . . . I perceive that you are minded, on the strength of what you have

seen and fancy, to taint my reputation. It is men of your sort who unmake kings. Besides whichI never

He stood up sharply as the little man moved. For a minute perhaps they faced one another. Overhead the

spiders' balls went driving. There was a quick movement among the pebbles; a running of feet, a cry of

Towards nightfall the wind fell. The sun set in a calm serenity, and the man who had once possessed the

silver bridle came at last very cautiously and by an easy slope out of the ravine again; but now he led the

white horse that once belonged to the little man. He would have gone back to his horse to get his

silvermounted bridle again, but he feared night and a quickening breeze might still find him in the valley,

and besides he disliked greatly to think he might discover his horse all swathed in cobwebs and perhaps

And as he thought of those cobwebs and of all the dangers he had been through, and the manner in which he

had been preserved that day, his hand sought a little reliquary that hung about his neck, and he clasped it for a

"I was hot with passion," he said, "and now she has met her reward. They also, no doubt"

And behold! Far away out of the wooded slopes across the valley, but in the clearness of the sunset distinct

At that his expression of serene resignation changed to an amazed anger. Smoke? He turned the head of the

white horse about, and hesitated. And as he did so a little rustle of air went through the grass about him. Far

away upon some reeds swayed a tattered sheet of grey. He looked at the cobwebs; he looked at the smoke.

As he rode, he picked his way amidst stranded masses of web. For some reason there were many dead spiders

on the ground, and those that lived feasted guiltily on their fellows. At the sound of his horse's hoofs they

Their time had passed. From the ground without either a wind to carry them or a winding sheet ready, these

things, for all their poison, could do him little evil. He flicked with his belt at those he fancied came too near.

Once, where a number ran together over a bare place, he was minded to dismount and trample them with his

boots, but this impulse he overcame. Ever and again he turned in his saddle, and looked back at the smoke.

"Spiders," he muttered over and over again. "Spiders! Well, well. . . . The next time I must spin a web."

He sits not a dozen yards away. If I glance over my shoulder I can see him. And if I catch his eyeand

Confound his suspicion! If I wanted to tell on him I should have told long ago. I don't tell and I don't tell, and

he ought to feel at his ease. As if anything so gross and fat as he could feel at ease! Who would believe me if

Poor old Pyecraft! Great, uneasy jelly of substance! The fattest clubman in London.

He sits at one of the little club tables in the huge bay by the fire, stuffing. What is he stuffing? I glance

judiciously and catch him biting at a round of hot buttered teacake, with his eyes on me. Confound

That settles it, Pyecraft! Since you WILL be abject, since you WILL behave as though I was not a man of

honour, here, right under your embedded eyes, I write the thing downthe plain truth about Pyecraft. The

man I helped, the man I shielded, and who has requited me by making my club unendurable, absolutely

unendurable, with his liquid appeal, with the perpetual "don't tell" of his looks.

Pyecraft. I made the acquaintance of Pyecraft in this very smokingroom. I was a young, nervous new

member, and he saw it. I was sitting all alone, wishing I knew more of the members, and suddenly he came, a

great rolling front of chins and abdomina, towards me, and grunted and sat down in a chair close by me and

wheezed for a space, and scraped for a space with a match and lit a cigar, and then addressed me. I forget

what he saidsomething about the matches not lighting properly, and afterwards as he talked he kept

stopping the waiters one by one as they went by, and telling them about the matches in that thin, fluty voice

He talked about various things and came round to games. And thence to my figure and complexion. "YOU

ought to be a good cricketer," he said. I suppose I am slender, slender to what some people would call lean,

and I suppose I am rather dark, stillI am not ashamed of having a Hindu greatgrandmother, but, for all

that, I don't want casual strangers to see through me at a glance to HER. So that I was set against Pyecraft

"I expect," he said, "you take no more exercise than I do, and probably you eat no less." (Like all excessively

obese people he fancied he ate nothing.) "Yet,"and he smiled an oblique smile "we differ."

And then he began to talk about his fatness and his fatness; all he did for his fatness and all he was going to

do for his fatness; what people had advised him to do for his fatness and what he had heard of people doing

for fatness similar to his. "A priori," he said, "one would think a question of nutrition could be answered by

dietary and a question of assimilation by drugs." It was stifling. It was dumpling talk. It made me feel swelled

One stands that sort of thing once in a way at a club, but a time came when I fancied I was standing too

much. He took to me altogether too conspicuously. I could never go into the smokingroom but he would

come wallowing towards me, and sometimes he came and gormandised round and about me while I had my

lunch. He seemed at times almost to be clinging to me. He was a bore, but not so fearful a bore as to be

limited to me; and from the first there was something in his manneralmost as though he knew, almost as

though he penetrated to the fact that I MIGHTthat there was a remote, exceptional chance in me that no

"I'd give anything to get it down," he would say"anything," and peer at me over his vast cheeks and pant.

Poor old Pyecraft! He has just gonged, no doubt to order another buttered teacake!

He came to the actual thing one day. "Our Pharmacopoeia," he said, "our Western Pharmacopoeia, is

I was quite suddenly angry with him. "Look here," I said, "who told you about my greatgrandmother's

"Every time we've met for a week," I said, "and we've met pretty oftenyou've given me a broad hint or so

"Well," he said, "now the cat's out of the bag, I'll admit, yes, it is so. I had it"

"My greatgrandmother's recipes," I said, "are queer things to handle. My father was near making me

But after going so far Pyecraft was resolved I should go farther. I was always a little afraid if I tried his

patience too much he would fall on me suddenly and smother me. I own I was weak. But I was also annoyed

with Pyecraft. I had got to that state of feeling for him that disposed me to say, "Well, TAKE the risk!" The

little affair of Pattison to which I have alluded was a different matter altogether. What it was doesn't concern

us now, but I knew, anyhow, that the particular recipe I used then was safe. The rest I didn't know so much

about, and, on the whole, I was inclined to doubt their safety pretty completely.

That evening I took that queer, oddscented sandalwood box out of my safe and turned the rustling skins

over. The gentleman who wrote the recipes for my greatgrandmother evidently had a weakness for skins of

a miscellaneous origin, and his handwriting was cramped to the last degree. Some of the things are quite

unreadable to methough my family, with its Indian Civil Service associations, has kept up a knowledge of

Hindustani from generation to generationand none are absolutely plain sailing. But I found the one that I

knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it.

"Look here," said I to Pyecraft next day, and snatched the slip away from his eager grasp.

"So far as Ican make it out, this is a recipe for Loss of Weight. ("Ah!" said Pyecraft.) I'm not absolutely

sure, but I think it's that. And if you take my advice you'll leave it alone. Because, you know I blacken my

blood in your interest, Pyecraftmy ancestors on that side were, so far as I can gather, a jolly queer lot.

I leant back in my chair. My imagination made one mighty effort and fell flat within me. "What in Heaven's

He was impervious to reason. I made him promise never to say a word to me about his disgusting fatness

I did my best. After that we didn't speak for a fortnight. Whenever he approached me I frowned and motioned

him away, and he respected our compact, but at the end of a fortnight he was as fat as ever. And then he got a

"I must speak," he said. "It isn't fair. There's something wrong. It's done me no good. You're not doing your

recipes. When condition or quality is not specified you must get the worst. She was drastic or nothing. . . .

And there's one or two possible alternatives to some of these other things. You got FRESH rattlesnake

"Yes. H'm. Well, I'll write the alternatives down. So far as I know the language, the spelling of this recipe is

For a month after that I saw Pyecraft constantly at the club and as fat and anxious as ever. He kept our treaty,

but at times he broke the spirit of it by shaking his head despondently. Then one day in the cloakroom he

I could have fancied he had desisted, and I saw him one day talking to three new members about his fatness

as though he was in search of other recipes. And then, quite unexpectedly, his telegram came.

"Mr. Formalyn!" bawled a pageboy under my nose, and I took the telegram and opened it at once.

"H'm," said I, and to tell the truth I was so pleased at the rehabilitation of my great grandmother's reputation

I got Pyecraft's address from the hall porter. Pyecraft inhabited the upper half of a house in Bloomsbury, and

I went there so soon as I had done my coffee and Trappistine. I did not wait to finish my cigar.

"He shouldn't have tried it, anyhow," I said to myself. "A man who eats like a pig ought to look like a pig."

An obviously worthy woman, with an anxious face and a carelessly placed cap, came and surveyed me

"'E said you was to come in if you came," she said, and regarded me, making no motion to show me

"Locked himself in yesterday morning and 'asn't let any one in since, sir. And ever and again SWEARING.

She shook her head sadly, "'E keeps on calling for vittles, sir. 'EAVY vittles 'e wants. I get 'im what I can.

Pork 'e's 'ad, sooit puddin', sossiges, noo bread. Everythink like that. Left outside, if you please, and me go

Then I could hear a curious pattering upon the door, almost like some one feeling for the handle in the dark,

I never had such a shock in my life. There was his sittingroom in a state of untidy disorder, plates and dishes

There he was right up close to the cornice in the corner by the door, as though some one had glued him to the

ceiling. His face was anxious and angry. He panted and gesticulated. "Shut the door," he said. "If that woman

"If anything gives way and you tumble down," I said, "you'll break your neck, Pyecraft."

And then abruptly I realised that he was not holding on at all, that he was floating up therejust as a

gasfilled bladder might have floated in the same position. He began a struggle to thrust himself away from

the ceiling and to clamber down the wall to me. "It's that prescription," he panted, as he did so. "Your

He took hold of a framed engraving rather carelessly as he spoke and it gave way, and he flew back to the

ceiling again, while the picture smashed onto the sofa. Bump he went against the ceiling, and I knew then

why he was all over white on the more salient curves and angles of his person. He tried again more carefully,

It was really a most extraordinary spectacle, that great, fat, apoplecticlooking man upside down and trying

to get from the ceiling to the floor. "That prescription," he said. "Too successful."

"By Jove, Pyecraft," said I, "what you wanted was a cure for fatness! But you always called it weight. You

Somehow I was extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time. "Let me help you!" I said, and took

his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get a foothold somewhere. It was very like holding

"That table," he said, pointing, "is solid mahogany and very heavy. If you can put me under that"

I did, and there he wallowed about like a captive balloon, while I stood on his hearthrug and talked to him.

I should fancy they all did. Whether one regards the ingredients or the probable compound or the possible

results, almost all of my greatgrandmother's remedies appear to me at least to be extraordinarily uninviting.

"And as I felt lighter and better after an hour, I decided to take the draught."

"I held my nose," he explained. "And then I kept on getting lighter and lighterand helpless, you know."

He gave way to a sudden burst of passion. "What the goodness am I to DO?" he said.

"There's one thing pretty evident," I said, "that you mustn't do. If you go out of doors, you'll go up and up." I

waved an arm upward. "They'd have to send SantosDumont after you to bring you down again."

And then there was another burst of passion, and he kicked out at adjacent chairs and banged the floor. He

behaved just as I should have expected a great, fat, selfindulgent man to behave under trying

circumstancesthat is to say, very badly. He spoke of me and my greatgrandmother with an utter want of

And generously disregarding the insults he was putting upon me, I sat down in his armchair and began to talk

I pointed out to him that this was a trouble he had brought upon himself, and that it had almost an air of

poetical justice. He had eaten too much. This he disputed, and for a time we argued the point.

He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson. "And then," said I, "you committed

the sin of euphuism. You called it not Fat, which is just and inglorious, but Weight. You"

I suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. So we came to the really sensible part of the

business. I suggested that it would not be difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling with his

But that was no great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out, to make a shakeup under a wire

mattress, fasten the under things on with tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to button at the side.

He would have to confide in his housekeeper, I said; and after some squabbling he agreed to that. (Afterwards

it was quite delightful to see the beautifully matteroffact way with which the good lady took all these

amazing inversions.) He could have a library ladder in his room, and all his meals could be laid on the top of

his bookcase. We also hit on an ingenious device by which he could get to the floor whenever he wanted,

which was simply to put the British Encyclopaedia (tenth edition) on the top of his open shelves. He just

pulled out a couple of volumes and held on, and down he came. And we agreed there must be iron staples

along the skirting, so that he could cling to those whenever he wanted to get about the room on the lower

As we got on with the thing I found myself almost keenly interested. It was I who called in the housekeeper

and broke matters to her, and it was I chiefly who fixed up the inverted bed. In fact, I spent two whole days at

his flat. I am a handy, interfering sort of man with a screwdriver, and I made all sorts of ingenious

adaptations for himran a wire to bring his bells within reach, turned all his electric lights up instead of

down, and so on. The whole affair was extremely curious and interesting to me, and it was delightful to think

of Pyecraft like some great, fat blowfly, crawling about on his ceiling and clambering round the lintels of

his doors from one room to another, and never, never, never coming to the club any more. . . .

Then, you know, my fatal ingenuity got the better of me. I was sitting by his fire drinking his whisky, and he

was up in his favourite corner by the cornice, tacking a Turkey carpet to the ceiling, when the idea struck me.

And before I could calculate the complete consequences of my notion I blurted it out. "Lead underclothing,"

Pyecraft received the thing almost in tears. "To be right ways up again" he said. I gave him the whole

secret before I saw where it would take me. "Buy sheet lead," I said, "stamp it into discs. Sew 'em all over

your underclothes until you have enough. Have leadsoled boots, carry a bag of solid lead, and the thing is

done! Instead of being a prisoner here you may go abroad again, Pyecraft; you may travel"

A still happier idea came to me. "You need never fear a shipwreck. All you need do is just slip off some or all

of your clothes, take the necessary amount of luggage in your hand, and float up in the air"

In his emotion he dropped the tackhammer within an ace of my head. "By Jove!" he said, "I shall be able to

The thing pulled me up short. "By Jove!" I said faintly. "Yes. Of courseyou will."

He did. He does. There he sits behind me now, stuffingas I live! a third go of buttered teacake. And no

one in the whole world knows except his housekeeper and methat he weighs practically nothing; that he

is a mere boring mass of assimilatory matter, mere clouds in clothing, niente, nefas, the most inconsiderable

of men. There he sits watching until I have done this writing. Then, if he can, he will waylay me. He will

He will tell me over again all about it, how it feels, how it doesn't feel, how he sometimes hopes it is passing

off a little. And always somewhere in that fat, abundant discourse he will say, "The secret's keeping, eh? If

any one knew of itI should be so ashamed. . . . Makes a fellow look such a fool, you know. Crawling about

And now to elude Pyecraft, occupying, as he does, an admirable strategic position between me and the door.

"Nonsense!" I said, and stared back at the shop. It was the usual village shop, postoffice, telegraph wire on

its brow, zinc pans and brushes outside, boots, shirtings, and potted meats in the window. "Tell me about it," I

"_I_ don't know," said the Doctor. "He's an ordinary sort of lout Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody

"I know nothing about it," said the Doctor, "and I don't WANT to know. I attended him for a broken

fingerMarried and Single cricket match and that's when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows

you the sort of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh? Nice to get modern sanitary ideas into a people like

"Very," I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he went on to tell me about that business of the Bonham

drain. Things of that kind, I observe, are apt to weigh on the minds of Medical Officers of Health. I was as

sympathetic as I knew how, and when he called the Bonham people "asses," I said they were "thundering

Afterwards, later in the summer, an urgent desire to seclude myself, while finishing my chapter on Spiritual

Pathologyit was really, I believe, stiffer to write than it is to readtook me to Bignor. I lodged at a

farmhouse, and presently found myself outside that little general shop again, in search of tobacco.

I was served by a short, but shapely, young man, with a fair downy complexion, good, small teeth, blue eyes,

and a languid manner. I scrutinised him curiously. Except for a touch of melancholy in his expression, he was

nothing out of the common. He was in the shirtsleeves and tuckedup apron of his trade, and a pencil was

thrust behind his inoffensive ear. Athwart his black waistcoat was a gold chain, from which dangled a bent

"Nothing more today, sir?" he inquired. He leant forward over my bill as he spoke.

He looked up at me for a moment with wrinkled brows, with an aggrieved, exasperated face. "O SHUT it! "

he said, and, after a moment of hostility, eye to eye, he went on adding up my bill. "Four, six and a half," he

Well, I got from that to confidencethrough a series of toilsome efforts. I picked him up again in the Village

Room, where of a night I went to play billiards after my supper, and mitigate the extreme seclusion from my

kind that was so helpful to work during the day. I contrived to play with him and afterwards to talk with him.

I found the one subject to avoid was Fairyland. On everything else he was open and amiable in a

commonplace sort of way, but on that he had been worriedit was a manifest taboo. Only once in the room

did I hear the slightest allusion to his experience in his presence, and that was by a crossgrained farm hand

who was losing to him. Skelmersdale had run a break into double figures, which, by the Bignor standards,

was uncommonly good play. "Steady on!" said his adversary. "None of your fairy flukes!"

Skelmersdale stared at him for a moment, cue in hand, then flung it down and walked out of the room.

"Why can't you leave 'im alone?" said a respectable elder who had been enjoying the game, and in the general

murmur of disapproval the grin of satisfied wit faded from the ploughboy's face.

"'Tain't no joke about Fairyland, not to young Skelmersdale," said the respectable elder, drinking. A little man

with rosy cheeks was more communicative. "They DO say, sir," he said, "that they took him into Aldington

And with that the gathering was well under weigh. Once one sheep had started, others were ready enough to

follow, and in a little time I had at least the exterior aspect of the Skelmersdale affair. Formerly, before he

came to Bignor, he had been in that very similar little shop at Aldington Corner, and there whatever it was

did happen had taken place. The story was clear that he had stayed out late one night on the Knoll and

vanished for three weeks from the sight of men, and had returned with "his cuffs as clean as when he started,"

and his pockets full of dust and ashes. He returned in a state of moody wretchedness that only slowly passed

away, and for many days he would give no account of where it was he had been. The girl he was engaged to

at Clapton Hill tried to get it out of him, and threw him over partly because he refused, and partly because, as

she said, he fairly gave her the "'ump." And then when, some time after, he let out to some one carelessly that

he had been in Fairyland and wanted to go back, and when the thing spread and the simple badinage of the

countryside came into play, he threw up his situation abruptly, and came to Bignor to get out of the fuss. But

as to what had happened in Fairyland none of these people knew. There the gathering in the Village Room

Their air in dealing with this marvel was ostensibly critical and sceptical, but I could see a considerable

amount of belief showing through their guarded qualifications. I took a line of intelligent interest, tinged with

"There's amany have tried to dig on Aldington Knoll," said the respectable elder, solemnly, "one time and

another. But there's none as goes about today to tell what they got by digging."

The unanimity of vague belief that surrounded me was rather impressive; I felt there must surely be

SOMETHING at the root of so much conviction, and the already pretty keen curiosity I felt about the real

facts of the case was distinctly whetted. If these real facts were to be got from any one, they were to be got

from Skelmersdale himself; and I set myself, therefore, still more assiduously to efface the first bad

impression I had made and win his confidence to the pitch of voluntary speech. In that endeavour I had a

social advantage. Being a person of affability and no apparent employment, and wearing tweeds and

knickerbockers, I was naturally classed as an artist in Bignor, and in the remarkable code of social precedence

prevalent in Bignor an artist ranks considerably higher than a grocer's assistant. Skelmersdale, like too many

of his class, is something of a snob; he had told me to "shut it," only under sudden, excessive provocation,

and with, I am certain, a subsequent repentance; he was, I knew, quite glad to be seen walking about the

village with me. In due course, he accepted the proposal of a pipe and whisky in my rooms readily enough,

and there, scenting by some happy instinct that there was trouble of the heart in this, and knowing that

confidences beget confidences, I plied him with much of interest and suggestion from my real and fictitious

past. And it was after the third whisky of the third visit of that sort, if I remember rightly, that a propos of

some artless expansion of a little affair that had touched and left me in my teens, that he did at last, of his own

free will and motion, break the ice. "It was like that with me," he said, "over there at Aldington. It's just that

that's so rum. First I didn't care a bit and it was all her, and afterwards, when it was too late, it was, in a

I forbore to jump upon this allusion, and so he presently threw out another, and in a little while he was

making it as plain as daylight that the one thing he wanted to talk about now was this Fairyland adventure he

had sat tight upon for so long. You see, I'd done the trick with him, and from being just another

halfincredulous, wouldbe facetious stranger, I had, by all my wealth of shameless selfexposure, become

the possible confidant. He had been bitten by the desire to show that he, too, had lived and felt many things,

He was certainly confoundedly allusive at first, and my eagerness to clear him up with a few precise

questions was only equalled and controlled by my anxiety not to get to this sort of thing too soon. But in

another meeting or so the basis of confidence was complete; and from first to last I think I got most of the

items and aspects indeed, I got quite a number of times over almost everything that Mr. Skelmersdale, with

his very limited powers of narration, will ever be able to tell. And so I come to the story of his adventure, and

I piece it all together again. Whether it really happened, whether he imagined it or dreamt it, or fell upon it in

some strange hallucinatory trance, I do not profess to say. But that he invented it I will not for one moment

entertain. The man simply and honestly believes the thing happened as he says it happened; he is

transparently incapable of any lie so elaborate and sustained, and in the belief of the simple, yet often keenly

penetrating, rustic minds about him I find a very strong confirmation of his sincerity. He believes and

nobody can produce any positive fact to falsify his belief. As for me, with this much of endorsement, I

He says he went to sleep on Aldington Knoll about ten o'clock one nightit was quite possibly Midsummer

night, though he has never thought of the date, and he cannot be sure within a week or so and it was a fine

night and windless, with a rising moon. I have been at the pains to visit this Knoll thrice since his story grew

up under my persuasions, and once I went there in the twilight summer moonrise on what was, perhaps, a

similar night to that of his adventure. Jupiter was great and splendid above the moon, and in the north and

northwest the sky was green and vividly bright over the sunken sun. The Knoll stands out bare and bleak

under the sky, but surrounded at a little distance by dark thickets, and as I went up towards it there was a

mighty starting and scampering of ghostly or quite invisible rabbits. Just over the crown of the Knoll, but

nowhere else, was a multitudinous thin trumpeting of midges. The Knoll is, I believe, an artificial mound, the

tumulus of some great prehistoric chieftain, and surely no man ever chose a more spacious prospect for a

sepulchre. Eastward one sees along the hills to Hythe, and thence across the Channel to where, thirty miles

and more perhaps, away, the great white lights by Gris Nez and Boulogne wink and pass and shine.

Westward lies the whole tumbled valley of the Weald, visible as far as Hindhead and Leith Hill, and the

valley of the Stour opens the Downs in the north to interminable hills beyond Wye. All Romney Marsh lies

southward at one's feet, Dymchurch and Romney and Lydd, Hastings and its hill are in the middle distance,

and the hills multiply vaguely far beyond where Eastbourne rolls up to Beachy Head.

And out upon all this it was that Skelmersdale wandered, being troubled in his earlier love affair, and as he

says, "not caring WHERE he went." And there he sat down to think it over, and so, sulking and grieving, was

The quarrel that had upset him was some trivial matter enough between himself and the girl at Clapton Hill to

whom he was engaged. She was a farmer's daughter, said Skelmersdale, and "very respectable," and no doubt

an excellent match for him; but both girl and lover were very young and with just that mutual jealousy, that

intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and wisdom do

presently and most mercifully dull. What the precise matter of quarrel was I have no idea. She may have said

she liked men in gaiters when he hadn't any gaiters on, or he may have said he liked her better in a different

sort of hat, but however it began, it got by a series of clumsy stages to bitterness and tears. She no doubt got

tearful and smeary, and he grew dusty and drooping, and she parted with invidious comparisons, grave doubts

whether she ever had REALLY cared for him, and a clear certainty she would never care again. And with this

sort of thing upon his mind he came out upon Aldington Knoll grieving, and presently, after a long interval,

He woke to find himself on a softer turf than ever he had slept on before, and under the shade of very dark

trees that completely hid the sky. Always, indeed, in Fairyland the sky is hidden, it seems. Except for one

night when the fairies were dancing, Mr. Skelmersdale, during all his time with them, never saw a star. And

of that night I am in doubt whether he was in Fairyland proper or out where the rings and rushes are, in those

But it was light under these trees for all that, and on the leaves and amidst the turf shone a multitude of

glowworms, very bright and fine. Mr. Skelmersdale's first impression was that he was SMALL, and the next

that quite a number of people still smaller were standing all about him. For some reason, he says, he was

neither surprised nor frightened, but sat up quite deliberately and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. And there

all about him stood the smiling elves who had caught him sleeping under their privileges and had brought

What these elves were like I have failed to gather, so vague and imperfect is his vocabulary, and so

unobservant of all minor detail does he seem to have been. They were clothed in something very light and

beautiful, that was neither wool, nor silk, nor leaves, nor the petals of flowers. They stood all about him as he

sat and waked, and down the glade towards him, down a glowworm avenue and fronted by a star, came at

once that Fairy Lady who is the chief personage of his memory and tale. Of her I gathered more. She was

clothed in filmy green, and about her little waist was a broad silver girdle. Her hair waved back from her

forehead on either side; there were curls not too wayward and yet astray, and on her brow was a little tiara,

set with a single star. Her sleeves were some sort of open sleeves that gave little glimpses of her arms; her

throat, I think, was a little displayed, because he speaks of the beauty of her neck and chin. There was a

necklace of coral about her white throat, and in her breast a coralcoloured flower. She had the soft lines of a

little child in her chin and cheeks and throat. And her eyes, I gather, were of a kindled brown, very soft and

straight and sweet under her level brows. You see by these particulars how greatly this lady must have

loomed in Mr. Skelmersdale's picture. Certain things he tried to express and could not express; "the way she

moved," he said several times; and I fancy a sort of demure joyousness radiated from this Lady.

And it was in the company of this delightful person, as the guest and chosen companion of this delightful

person, that Mr. Skelmersdale set out to be taken into the intimacies of Fairyland. She welcomed him gladly

and a little warmlyI suspect a pressure of his hand in both of hers and a lit face to his. After all, ten years

ago young Skelmersdale may have been a very comely youth. And once she took his arm, and once, I think,

Just how things chanced and happened there is no telling from Mr. Skelmersdale's disarticulated skeleton of

description. He gives little unsatisfactory glimpses of strange corners and doings, of places where there were

many fairies together, of "toadstool things that shone pink," of fairy food, of which he could only say "you

should have tasted it!" and of fairy music, "like a little musical box," that came out of nodding flowers. There

was a great open place where fairies rode and raced on "things," but what Mr. Skelmersdale meant by "these

here things they rode," there is no telling. Larvae, perhaps, or crickets, or the little beetles that elude us so

abundantly. There was a place where water splashed and gigantic kingcups grew, and there in the hotter

times the fairies bathed together. There were games being played and dancing and much elvish lovemaking,

too, I think, among the mossbranch thickets. There can be no doubt that the Fairy Lady made love to Mr.

Skelmersdale, and no doubt either that this young man set himself to resist her. A time came, indeed, when

she sat on a bank beside him, in a quiet, secluded place "all smelling of vi'lets," and talked to him of love.

"When her voice went low and she whispered," said Mr. Skelmersdale, "and laid 'er 'and on my 'and, you

know, and came close with a soft, warm friendly way she 'ad, it was as much as I could do to keep my 'ead."

It seems he kept his head to a certain limited unfortunate extent. He saw "'ow the wind was blowing," he says,

and so, sitting there in a place all smelling of violets, with the touch of this lovely Fairy Lady about him, Mr.

She had told him she loved him dearly, that he was a sweet human lad for her, and whatever he would ask of

And Mr. Skelmersdale, who, I fancy, tried hard to avoid looking at her little lips as they just dropped apart

and came together, led up to the more intimate question by saying he would like enough capital to start a little

shop. He'd just like to feel, he said, he had money enough to do that. I imagine a little surprise in those brown

eyes he talked about, but she seemed sympathetic for all that, and she asked him many questions about the

little shop, "laughing like" all the time. So he got to the complete statement of his affianced position, and told

"Everything," said Mr. Skelmersdale, "just who she was, and where she lived, and everything about her. I sort

"'Whatever you want you shall have,' said the Fairy Lady. 'That's as good as done. You SHALL feel you have

And Mr. Skelmersdale pretended not to hear the latter part of her remark, and said she was very kind. That he

There are kisses and kisses, I am told, and this must have been quite the other sort from Millie's resonant

signals of regard. There was something magic in that kiss; assuredly it marked a turning point. At any rate,

this is one of the passages that he thought sufficiently important to describe most at length. I have tried to get

it right, I have tried to disentangle it from the hints and gestures through which it came to me, but I have no

doubt that it was all different from my telling and far finer and sweeter, in the soft filtered light and the subtly

stirring silences of the fairy glades. The Fairy Lady asked him more about Millie, and was she very lovely,

and so on a great many times. As to Millie's loveliness, I conceive him answering that she was "all right."

And then, or on some such occasion, the Fairy Lady told him she had fallen in love with him as he slept in

the moonlight, and so he had been brought into Fairyland, and she had thought, not knowing of Millie, that

perhaps he might chance to love her. "But now you know you can't," she said, "so you must stop with me just

a little while, and then you must go back to Millie." She told him that, and you know Skelmersdale was

already in love with her, but the pure inertia of his mind kept him in the way he was going. I imagine him

sitting in a sort of stupefaction amidst all these glowing beautiful things, answering about his Millie and the

little shop he projected and the need of a horse and cart. . . . And that absurd state of affairs must have gone

on for days and days. I see this little lady, hovering about him and trying to amuse him, too dainty to

understand his complexity and too tender to let him go. And he, you know, hypnotised as it were by his

earthly position, went his way with her hither and thither, blind to everything in Fairyland but this wonderful

intimacy that had come to him. It is hard, it is impossible, to give in print the effect of her radiant sweetness

shining through the jungle of poor Skelmersdale's rough and broken sentences. To me, at least, she shone

There must have been many days of things while all this was happening and once, I say, they danced under

the moonlight in the fairy rings that stud the meadows near Smeethbut at last it all came to an end. She led

him into a great cavernous place, lit by a red nightlight sort of thing, where there were coffers piled on

coffers, and cups and golden boxes, and a great heap of what certainly seemed to all Mr. Skelmersdale's

sensescoined gold. There were little gnomes amidst this wealth, who saluted her at her coming, and stood

"And now," she said, "you have been kind to stay with me so long, and it is time I let you go. You must go

back to your Millie. You must go back to your Millie, and herejust as I promised youthey will give you

"She choked like," said Mr. Skelmersdale. "At that, I had a sort of feeling" (he touched his breastbone) "as

though I was fainting here. I felt pale, you know, and shivering, and even thenI 'adn't a thing to say."

"Nothing," he said. "I stood like a stuffed calf. She just looked back once, you know, and stood smiling like

and cryingI could see the shine of her eyesand then she was gone, and there was all these little fellows

bustling about me, stuffing my 'ands and my pockets and the back of my collar and everywhere with gold."

And then it was, when the Fairy Lady had vanished, that Mr. Skelmersdale really understood and knew. He

suddenly began plucking out the gold they were thrusting upon him, and shouting out at them to prevent their

giving him more. "'I don't WANT yer gold,' I said. 'I 'aven't done yet. I'm not going. I want to speak to that

Fairy Lady again.' I started off to go after her and they held me back. Yes, stuck their little 'ands against my

middle and shoved me back. They kept giving me more and more gold until it was running all down my

trouser legs and dropping out of my 'ands. 'I don't WANT yer gold,' I says to them, 'I want just to speak to the

So he ran in search of her out of this redlit cave, down a long grotto, seeking her, and thence he came out in

a great and desolate place athwart which a swarm of willo'thewisps were flying to and fro. And about

him elves were dancing in derision, and the little gnomes came out of the cave after him, carrying gold in

handfuls and casting it after him, shouting, "Fairy love and fairy gold! Fairy love and fairy gold!"

And when he heard these words, came a great fear that it was all over, and he lifted up his voice and called to

her by her name, and suddenly set himself to run down the slope from the mouth of the cavern, through a

place of thorns and briers, calling after her very loudly and often. The elves danced about him unheeded,

pinching him and pricking him, and the willo'thewisps circled round him and dashed into his face, and

the gnomes pursued him shouting and pelting him with fairy gold. As he ran with all this strange rout about

him and distracting him, suddenly he was kneedeep in a swamp, and suddenly he was amidst thick twisted

He fell and he rolled over, and in that instant he found himself sprawling upon Aldington Knoll, all lonely

He sat up sharply at once, he says, and found he was very stiff and cold, and his clothes were damp with dew.

The first pallor of dawn and a chilly wind were coming up together. He could have believed the whole thing a

strangely vivid dream until he thrust his hand into his side pocket and found it stuffed with ashes. Then he

knew for certain it was fairy gold they had given him. He could feel all their pinches and pricks still, though

there was never a bruise upon him. And in that manner, and so suddenly, Mr. Skelmersdale came out of

Fairyland back into this world of men. Even then he fancied the thing was but the matter of a night until he

returned to the shop at Aldington Corner and discovered amidst their astonishment that he had been away

"Never," I said, and he expatiated for a time on the behaviour of this person and that. One name he avoided

"Every one was changed. Changed for good. Every one seemed big, you know, and coarse. And their voices

seemed loud. Why, the sun, when it rose in the morning, fair hit me in the eye!"

"I came up against her Sunday, coming out of church. 'Where you been?' she said, and I saw there was a row.

_I_ didn't care if there was. I seemed to forget about her even while she was there atalking to me. She was

just nothing. I couldn't make out whatever I 'ad seen in 'er ever, or what there could 'ave been. Sometimes

when she wasn't about, I did get back a little, but never when she was there. Then it was always the other

"Married 'er cousin," said Mr. Skelmersdale, and reflected on the pattern of the tablecloth for a space.

When he spoke again it was clear that his former sweetheart had clean vanished from his mind, and that the

talk had brought back the Fairy Lady triumphant in his heart. He talked of hersoon he was letting out the

oddest things, queer love secrets it would be treachery to repeat. I think, indeed, that was the queerest thing in

the whole affair, to hear that neat little grocer man after his story was done, with a glass of whisky beside him

and a cigar between his fingers, witnessing, with sorrow still, though now, indeed, with a timeblunted

anguish, of the inappeasable hunger of the heart that presently came upon him. "I couldn't eat," he said, "I

couldn't sleep. I made mistakes in orders and got mixed with change. There she was day and night, drawing

me and drawing me. Oh, I wanted her. Lord! how I wanted her! I was up there, most evenings I was up there

on the Knoll, often even when it rained. I used to walk over the Knoll and round it and round it, calling for

them to let me in. Shouting. Near blubbering I was at times. Daft I was and miserable. I kept on saying it was

all a mistake. And every Sunday afternoon I went up there, wet and fine, though I knew as well as you do it

"I've tried to go to sleep there," he said, and I could swear his lips trembled. "I've tried to go to sleep there,

often and often. And, you know, I couldn't, sirnever. I've thought if I could go to sleep there, there might

be something. But I've sat up there and laid up there, and I couldn'tnot for thinking and longing. It's the

He blew, drank up the rest of his whisky spasmodically, stood up suddenly and buttoned his jacket, staring

closely and critically at the cheap oleographs beside the mantel meanwhile. The little black notebook in

which he recorded the orders of his daily round projected stiffly from his breast pocket. When all the buttons

were quite done, he patted his chest and turned on me suddenly. "Well," he said, "I must be going."

There was something in his eyes and manner that was too difficult for him to express in words. "One gets

talking," he said at last at the door, and smiled wanly, and so vanished from my eyes. And that is the tale of

The scene amidst which Clayton told his last story comes back very vividly to my mind. There he sat, for the

greater part of the time, in the corner of the authentic settle by the spacious open fire, and Sanderson sat

beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore his name. There was Evans, and that marvel among actors,

Wish, who is also a modest man. We had all come down to the Mermaid Club that Saturday morning, except

Clayton, who had slept there overnightwhich indeed gave him the opening of his story. We had golfed

until golfing was invisible; we had dined, and we were in that mood of tranquil kindliness when men will

suffer a story. When Clayton began to tell one, we naturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed he

was lyingof that the reader will speedily be able to judge as well as I. He began, it is true, with an air of

matteroffact anecdote, but that we thought was only the incurable artifice of the man.

"I say!" he remarked, after a long consideration of the upward rain of sparks from the log that Sanderson had

"Who sleep in the other wing," said Clayton. "Yes. Well" He pulled at his cigar for some little time as

though he still hesitated about his confidence. Then he said, quite quietly, "I caught a ghost!"

And Evans, who admires Clayton immensely and has been four weeks in America, shouted, "CAUGHT a

He looked apologetically at me. "There's no eavesdropping of course, but we don't want to upset our very

excellent service with any rumours of ghosts in the place. There's too much shadow and oak panelling to

trifle with that. And this, you know, wasn't a regular ghost. I don't think it will come againever."

We laughed, and Clayton looked aggrieved. "I know," he said, with the flicker of a smile, "but the fact is it

really WAS a ghost, and I'm as sure of it as I am that I am talking to you now. I'm not joking. I mean what I

Sanderson drew deeply at his pipe, with one reddish eye on Clayton, and then emitted a thin jet of smoke

Clayton ignored the comment. "It is the strangest thing that has ever happened in my life. You know, I never

believed in ghosts or anything of the sort, before, ever; and then, you know, I bag one in a corner; and the

He meditated still more profoundly, and produced and began to pierce a second cigar with a curious little

"The poor devil was in trouble," said Clayton, bowed over his cigarend and with the very faintest note of

Clayton heaved a realistic sigh at the memory. "Good Lord!" he said; "yes." And then, "Poor fellow! yes."

"I never realised," said Clayton, ignoring him, "the poor sort of thing a ghost might be," and he hung us up

again for a time, while he sought for matches in his pocket and lit and warmed to his cigar.

We were none of us in a hurry. "A character," he said, "remains just the same character for all that it's been

disembodied. That's a thing we too often forget. People with a certain strength or fixity of purpose may have

ghosts of a certain strength and fixity of purposemost haunting ghosts, you know, must be as oneidea'd as

monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back again and again. This poor creature wasn't." He

suddenly looked up rather queerly, and his eye went round the room. "I say it," he said, "in all kindliness, but

that is the plain truth of the case. Even at the first glance he struck me as weak."

"I came upon him, you know, in the long passage. His back was towards me and I saw him first. Right off I

knew him for a ghost. He was transparent and whitish; clean through his chest I could see the glimmer of the

little window at the end. And not only his physique but his attitude struck me as being weak. He looked, you

know, as though he didn't know in the slightest whatever he meant to do. One hand was on the panelling and

"Lean. You know that sort of young man's neck that has two great flutings down the back, here and

hereso! And a little, meanish head with scrubby hairAnd rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower than

the hips; turndown collar, readymade short jacket, trousers baggy and a little frayed at the heels. That's

how he took me. I came very quietly up the staircase. I did not carry a light, you knowthe candles are on

the landing table and there is that lamp and I was in my list slippers, and I saw him as I came up. I stopped

dead at thattaking him in. I wasn't a bit afraid. I think that in most of these affairs one is never nearly so

afraid or excited as one imagines one would be. I was surprised and interested. I thought, 'Good Lord! Here's

a ghost at last! And I haven't believed for a moment in ghosts during the last fiveandtwenty years.'"

"I suppose I wasn't on the landing a moment before he found out I was there. He turned on me sharply, and I

saw the face of an immature young man, a weak nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin. So for an

instant we stoodhe looking over his shoulder at me and regarded one another. Then he seemed to

remember his high calling. He turned round, drew himself up, projected his face, raised his arms, spread his

hands in approved ghost fashioncame towards me. As he did so his little jaw dropped, and he emitted a

faint, drawnout 'Boo.' No, it wasn'tnot a bit dreadful. I'd dined. I'd had a bottle of champagne, and being

all alone, perhaps two or threeperhaps even four or fivewhiskies, so I was as solid as rocks and no more

frightened than if I'd been assailed by a frog. 'Boo!' I said. 'Nonsense. You don't belong to THIS place. What

"'Boobe hanged! Are you a member?' I said; and just to show I didn't care a pin for him I stepped through a

corner of him and made to light my candle. 'Are you a member?' I repeated, looking at him sideways.

"He moved a little so as to stand clear of me, and his bearing became crestfallen. 'No,' he said, in answer to

"'Well, that doesn't give you the run of the Mermaid Club. Is there any one you want to see, or anything of

that sort?' and doing it as steadily as possible for fear that he should mistake the carelessness of whisky for

the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight. I turned on him, holding it. 'What are you doing here?' I said.

"He had dropped his hands and stopped his booing, and there he stood, abashed and awkward, the ghost of a

"'That may be, but you haven't any business to haunt here. This is a respectable private club; people often

stop here with nursemaids and children, and, going about in the careless way you do, some poor little mite

could easily come upon you and be scared out of her wits. I suppose you didn't think of that?'

"'You should have done. You haven't any claim on the place, have you? Weren't murdered here, or anything

"'That's NO excuse.' I regarded him firmly. 'Your coming here is a mistake,' I said, in a tone of friendly

superiority. I feigned to see if I had my matches, and then looked up at him frankly. 'If I were you I wouldn't

"'No, sir. There's something I've forgotten. I've been hanging about here since midnight last night, hiding in

the cupboards of the empty bedrooms and things like that. I'm flurried. I've never come haunting before, and

"'Yes, sir. I've tried to do it several times, and it doesn't come off. There's some little thing has slipped me,

"That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked at me in such an abject way that for the life of me I

couldn't keep up quite the high, hectoring vein I had adopted. 'That's queer,' I said, and as I spoke I fancied I

heard some one moving about down below. 'Come into my room and tell me more about it,' I said. 'I didn't, of

course, understand this,' and I tried to take him by the arm. But, of course, you might as well have tried to

take hold of a puff of smoke! I had forgotten my number, I think; anyhow, I remember going into several

bedroomsit was lucky I was the only soul in that winguntil I saw my traps. 'Here we are,' I said, and sat

down in the armchair; 'sit down and tell me all about it. It seems to me you have got yourself into a jolly

"Well, he said he wouldn't sit down! he'd prefer to flit up and down the room if it was all the same to me. And

so he did, and in a little while we were deep in a long and serious talk. And presently, you know, something

of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out of me, and I began to realise just a little what a thundering rum

and weird business it was that I was in. There he was, semitransparent the proper conventional phantom,

and noiseless except for his ghost of a voiceflitting to and fro in that nice, clean, chintzhung old bedroom.

You could see the gleam of the copper candlesticks through him, and the lights on the brass fender, and the

corners of the framed engravings on the wall,and there he was telling me all about this wretched little life

of his that had recently ended on earth. He hadn't a particularly honest face, you know, but being transparent,

"_I_ don't see it," said Clayton, with inimitable assurance. "But it IS so, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't

believe he got once a nail's breadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had been killedhe went down

into a London basement with a candle to look for a leakage of gasand described himself as a senior

"That's what I thought, and the more he talked the more I thought it. There he was, purposeless in life and

purposeless out of it. He talked of his father and mother and his schoolmaster, and all who had ever been

anything to him in the world, meanly. He had been too sensitive, too nervous; none of them had ever valued

him properly or understood him, he said. He had never had a real friend in the world, I think; he had never

had a success. He had shirked games and failed examinations. 'It's like that with some people,' he said;

'whenever I got into the examinationroom or anywhere everything seemed to go.' Engaged to be married of

courseto another oversensitive person, I supposewhen the indiscretion with the gas escape ended his

"He wasn't clear on that point at all. The impression he gave me was of a sort of vague, intermediate state, a

special reserve for souls too nonexistent for anything so positive as either sin or virtue. _I_ don't know. He

was much too egotistical and unobservant to give me any clear idea of the kind of place, kind of country,

there is on the Other Side of Things. Wherever he was, he seems to have fallen in with a set of kindred

spirits: ghosts of weak Cockney young men, who were on a footing of Christian names, and among these

there was certainly a lot of talk about 'going haunting' and things like that. Yesgoing haunting! They

seemed to think 'haunting' a tremendous adventure, and most of them funked it all the time. And so primed,

"These are the impressions he gave me, anyhow," said Clayton, modestly. "I may, of course, have been in a

rather uncritical state, but that was the sort of background he gave to himself. He kept flitting up and down,

with his thin voice going talking, talking about his wretched self, and never a word of clear, firm statement

from first to last. He was thinner and sillier and more pointless than if he had been real and alive. Only then,

you know, he would not have been in my bedroom hereif he HAD been alive. I should have kicked him

"And there's just as much chance of their having ghosts as the rest of us," I admitted.

"What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the fact that he did seem within limits to have found

himself out. The mess he had made of haunting had depressed him terribly. He had been told it would be a

'lark'; he had come expecting it to be a 'lark,' and here it was, nothing but another failure added to his record!

He proclaimed himself an utter outandout failure. He said, and I can quite believe it, that he had never tried

to do anything all his life that he hadn't made a perfect mess ofand through all the wastes of eternity he

never would. If he had had sympathy, perhaps. He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He remarked

that, strange as it might seem to me, nobody, not any one, ever, had given him the amount of sympathy I was

doing now. I could see what he wanted straight away, and I determined to head him off at once. I may be a

brute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend, the recipient of the confidences of one of these egotistical

weaklings, ghost or body, is beyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. 'Don't you brood on these things

too much,' I said. 'The thing you've got to do is to get out of this get out of thissharp. You pull yourself

"Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That's how he had come in and that's how he had

"My dear man," said Clayton, turning on me and putting a great emphasis on certain words, "you want

EVERYTHING clear. _I_ don't know HOW. All I know is that you DOthat HE did, anyhow, at least.

After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly disappeared."

"Yes," said Clayton, and seemed to think. "It was tremendously queer," he said. "There we were, I and this

thin vague ghost, in that silent room, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Fridaynight town. Not a

sound except our voices and a faint panting he made when he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one

candle on the dressingtable alight, that was allsometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean,

astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened. 'I can't,' he said; 'I shall never!' And suddenly he

sat down on a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob. Lord! what a harrowing,

"'You pull yourself together,' I said, and tried to pat him on the back, and . . . my confounded hand went

through him! By that time, you know, I wasn't nearly somassive as I had been on the landing. I got the

queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand out of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking

over to the dressingtable. 'You pull yourself together,' I said to him, 'and try.' And in order to encourage and

"This is interesting," said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipebowl. "You mean to say this ghost of yours

"At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did it at lastrather suddenly. He despaired, we had

a scene, and then he got up abruptly and asked me to go through the whole performance, slowly, so that he

might see. 'I believe,' he said, 'if I could SEE I should spot what was wrong at once.' And he did. '_I_ know,'

he said. 'What do you know?' said I. '_I_ know,' he repeated. Then he said, peevishly, 'I CAN'T do it if you

look at meI really CAN'T; it's been that, partly, all along. I'm such a nervous fellow that you put me out.'

Well, we had a bit of an argument. Naturally I wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and suddenly

I had come over as tired as a doghe tired me out. 'All right,' I said, '_I_ won't look at you,' and turned

He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking in the lookingglass, to see just what it was had

hung. Round went his arms and his hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rush came to the last gesture of

allyou stand erect and open out your armsand so, don't you know, he stood. And then he didn't! He

didn't! He wasn't! I wheeled round from the lookingglass to him. There was nothingl I was alone, with the

flaring candles and a staggering mind. What had happened? Had anything happened? Had I been dreaming? .

. . And then, with an absurd note of finality about it, the clock upon the landing discovered the moment was

ripe for striking ONE. So!Ping! And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all my champagne and

whisky gone into the vast serene. Feeling queer, you knowconfoundedly QUEER! Queer! Good Lord!"

I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something, something perhaps in Clayton's voice

"Oh!" said Sanderson, and produced a penknife and set himself to grub the dottel out of the bowl of his clay.

"Why don't you do them now?" said Sanderson, shutting his penknife with a click.

"But he hasn't got 'em right," said Sanderson, plugging too much tobacco in his pipe.

We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through those gestures was like mocking a serious

matter. "But you don't believe?" I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire, weighing

"Clayton," said I, "you're too good a liar for us. Most of it was all right. But that disappearance . . . happened

He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug, and faced me. For a moment he regarded

his feet thoughtfully, and then for all the rest of the time his eyes were on the opposite wall, with an intent

expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the level of his eyes and so began. . . .

Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the Four Kings, which devotes itself so ably to the

study and elucidation of all the mysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students of this lodge

Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton's motions with a singular interest in his reddish eye.

"That's not bad," he said, when it was done. "You really do, you know, put things together, Clayton, in a most

"This," said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and writhing and thrust of the hands.

"That, you know, was what HE couldn't get right," said Clayton. "But how do YOU?"

"Most of this business, and particularly how you invented it, I don't understand at all," said Sanderson, "but

just that phaseI do." He reflected. "These happen to be a series of gesturesconnected with a certain

branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know. Or elseHOW?" He reflected still further. "I do not see I

can do any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if you don't, you

"I know nothing," said Clayton, "except what the poor devil let out last night."

"Well, anyhow," said Sanderson, and placed his churchwarden very carefully upon the shelf over the

He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I think there was just a little hesitation in his

"It's all right!" said Evans. "Matter is indestructible. You don't think any jiggerypokery of this sort is going

to snatch Clayton into the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as I'm concerned, until your

"I don't believe that," said Wish, and stood up and put his arm on Clayton's shoulder. "You've made me half

"I am," said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. "I believe that if he goes through these motions

"He'll not do anything of the sort," I cried. "There's only one way out of this world for men, and Clayton is

Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs and stopped beside the tole and stood

Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him. "Wish," he said, "is right and all you others

are wrong. I shall go. I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles through the air,

Presto!this hearthrug will be vacant, the room will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed

gentleman of fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I'm certain. So will you be. I decline to argue

"NO," said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised his hands once more to repeat the spirit's

By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tensionlargely because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat

all of us with our eyes on ClaytonI, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me as though from the

back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity

that was imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands and arms before us. As he

drew towards the end one piled up, one tingled in one's teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swing the

arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at last he swung out to this closing gesture I ceased

even to breathe. It was ridiculous, of course, but you know that ghoststory feeling. It was after dinner, in a

There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and his upturned face, assured and bright, in

the glare of the hanging lamp. We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came from all of

us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half a reassuring "NO!" For visiblyhe wasn't going.

It was all nonsense. He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, that was all! . . . And then in

It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its lights are suddenly extinguished. His eyes were

suddenly eyes that were fixed, his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stood there, very

That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping, things were falling, and we were

all moving. His knees seemed to give, and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms. . . .

It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent thing. We believed it, yet could not believe it.

. . . I came out of a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him, and his vest and shirt were torn

Wellthe simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience; there was no hurry for us to

comprehend. It lay there for an hour; it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day. Clayton

had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to and so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the

only road that mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass there by that poor ghost's incantation, or

whether he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy in the midst of an idle taleas the coroner's jury would have

us believeis no matter for my judging; it is just one of those inexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved

until the final solution of all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in the very moment, in the very

instant, of concluding those passes, he changed, and staggered, and fell down before usdead!

"It isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "But it's happened to me. Among other things."

"I was one of those men who were saved from the Ocean Pioneer. Gummy! how time flies! It's twenty years

The name was familiar, and I tried to recall when and where I had read it. The Ocean Pioneer? "Something

"That's it," he said. "In a beastly little channel she hadn't no business indodging pirates. It was before

they'd put the kybosh on that business. And there'd been volcanoes or something and all the rocks was wrong.

There's places about by Soona where you fair have to follow the rocks about to see where they're going next.

Down she went in twenty fathoms before you could have dealt for whist, with fifty thousand pounds worth of

But at the word salvage the sunburnt man exploded into language so extraordinarily horrible that I stopped

aghast. He came down to more ordinary swearing, and pulled himself up abruptly. "Excuse me," he said,

He leant over towards me. "I was in that job," he said. "Tried to make myself a rich man, and got made a god

"It ain't all jam being a god," said the sunburnt man, and for some time conversed by means of such pithy but

"There was me," said the sunburnt man, "and a seaman named Jacobs, and Always, the mate of the Ocean

Pioneer. And him it was that set the whole thing going. I remember him now, when we was in the jollyboat,

suggesting it all to our minds just by one sentence. He was a wonderful hand at suggesting things. 'There was

forty thousand pounds,' he said, 'on that ship, and it's for me to say just where she went down.' It didn't need

much brains to tumble to that. And he was the leader from the first to the last. He got hold of the Sanderses

and their brig; they were brothers, and the brig was the Pride of Banya, and he it was bought the

divingdress a secondhand one with a compressed air apparatus instead of pumping. He'd have done the

diving too, if it hadn't made him sick going down. And the salvage people were mucking about with a chart

he'd cooked up, as solemn as could be, at Starr Race, a hundred and twenty miles away.

"I can tell you we was a happy lot aboard that brig, jokes and drink and bright hopes all the time. It all

seemed so neat and clean and straightforward, and what rough chaps call a 'cert.' And we used to speculate

how the other blessed lot, the proper salvagers, who'd started two days before us, were getting on, until our

sides fairly ached. We all messed together in the Sanderses' cabinit was a curious crew, all officers and no

menand there stood the divingdress waiting its turn. Young Sanders was a humorous sort of chap, and

there certainly was something funny in the confounded thing's great fat head and its stare, and he made us see

it too. 'Jimmie Goggles,' he used to call it, and talk to it like a Christian. Asked if he was married, and how

Mrs. Goggles was, and all the little Goggleses. Fit to make you split. And every blessed day all of us used to

drink the health of Jimmy Goggles in rum, and unscrew his eye and pour a glass of rum in him, until, instead

of that nasty mackintosheriness, he smelt as nice in his inside as a cask of rum. It was jolly times we had in

"We weren't going to throw away our chances by any blessed hurry, you know, and we spent a whole day

sounding our way towards where the Ocean Pioneer had gone down, right between two chunks of ropy grey

rocklava rocks that rose nearly out of the water. We had to lay off about half a mile to get a safe

anchorage, and there was a thundering row who should stop on board. And there she lay just as she had gone

down, so that you could see the top of the masts that was still standing perfectly distinctly. The row ending in

all coming in the boat. I went down in the divingdress on Friday morning directly it was light.

"What a surprise it was! I can see it all now quite distinctly. It was a queerlooking place, and the light was

just coming. People over here think every blessed place in the tropics is a flat shore and palm trees and surf,

bless 'em! This place, for instance, wasn't a bit that way. Not common rocks they were, undermined by

waves; but great curved banks like ironwork cinder heaps, with green slime below, and thorny shrubs and

things just waving upon them here and there, and the water glassy calm and clear, and showing you a kind of

dirty greyblack shine, with huge flaring redbrown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling and darting

things going through it. And far away beyond the ditches and pools and the heaps was a forest on the

mountain flank, growing again after the fires and cinder showers of the last eruption. And the other way

forest, too, and a kind of brokenwhat is it?ambytheatre of black and rusty cinders rising out of it all, and

"The dawn, I say, was just coming, and there wasn't much colour about things, and not a human being but

ourselves anywhere in sight up or down the channel. Except the Pride of Banya, lying out beyond a lump of

"I don't know where they came from, not a bit. And we were feeling so safe that we were all alone that poor

young Sanders was asinging. I was in Jimmy Goggles, all except the helmet. 'Easy,' says Always, 'there's

her mast.' And after I'd had just one squint over the gunwale, I caught up the bogey and almost tipped out as

old Sanders brought the boat round. When the windows were screwed and everything was all right, I shut the

valve from the air belt in order to help my sinking, and jumped overboard, feet foremostfor we hadn't a

ladder. I left the boat pitching, and all of them staring down into the water after me, as my head sank down

into the weeds and blackness that lay about the mast. I suppose nobody, not the most cautious chap in the

world, would have bothered about a lookout at such a desolate place. It stunk of solitude.

"Of course you must understand that I was a greenhorn at diving. None of us were divers. We'd had to muck

about with the thing to get the way of it, and this was the first time I'd been deep. It feels damnable. Your ears

hurt beastly. I don't know if you've ever hurt yourself yawning or sneezing, but it takes you like that, only ten

times worse. And a pain over the eyebrows heresplittingand a feeling like influenza in the head. And it

isn't all heaven in your lungs and things. And going down feels like the beginning of a lift, only it keeps on.

And you can't turn your head to see what's above you, and you can't get a fair squint at what's happening to

your feet without bending down something painful. And being deep it was dark, let alone the blackness of the

ashes and mud that formed the bottom. It was like going down out of the dawn back into the night, so to

"The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot of fishes, and then a lot of flapping red

seaweed, and then whack I came with a kind of dull bang on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer, and the fishes

that had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm of flies from road stuff in summer time. I

turned on the compressed air againfor the suit was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, in spite of the

rumand stood recovering myself. It struck coolish down there, and that helped take off the stuffiness a bit.

"When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It was an extraordinary sight. Even the light was

extraordinary, a kind of reddycoloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweed that floated up on

either side of the ship. And far overhead just a moony, deep greenblue. The deck of the ship, except for a

slight list to starboard, was level, and lay all dark and long between the weeds, clear except where the masts

had snapped when she rolled, and vanishing into black night towards the forecastle. There wasn't any dead on

the decks, most were in the weeds alongside, I suppose; but afterwards I found two skeletons lying in the

passengers' cabins, where death had come to them. It was curious to stand on that deck and recognise it all,

bit by bit; a place against the rail where I'd been fond of smoking by starlight, and the corner where an old

chap from Sydney used to flirt with a widow we had aboard. A comfortable couple they'd been, only a month

"I've always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and I dare say I spent the best part of five minutes in such

thoughts before I went below to find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting, feeling it

was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down the companion. And there were things

moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a lot of loose

stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes. What do you think?

Backbone! But I never had any particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly,

and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed. I found it that trip. I lifted a box one end an inch or more."

He broke off in his story. "I've lifted it," he said, "as near as that! Forty thousand pounds worth of pure gold!

Gold! I shouted inside my helmet as a kind of cheer and hurt my ears. I was getting confounded stuffy and

tired by this timeI must have been down twentyfive minutes or moreand I thought this was good

enough. I went up the companion again, and as my eyes came up flush with the deck, a thundering great crab

gave a kind of hysterical jump and went scuttling off sideways. Quite a start it gave me. I stood up clear on

deck and shut the valve behind the helmet to let the air accumulate to carry me up againI noticed a kind of

whacking from above, as though they were hitting the water with an oar, but I didn't look up. I fancied they

"And then something shot down by mesomething heavy, and stood aquiver in the planks. I looked, and

there was a long knife I'd seen young Sanders handling. Thinks I, he's dropped it, and I was still calling him

this kind of fool and thatfor it might have hurt me seriouswhen I began to lift and drive up towards the

daylight. Just about the level of the top spars of the Ocean Pioneer, whack! I came against something sinking

down, and a boot knocked in front of my helmet. Then something else, struggling frightful. It was a big

weight atop of me, whatever it was, and moving and twisting about. I'd have thought it a big octopus, or some

such thing, if it hadn't been for the boot. But octopuses don't wear boots. It was all in a moment, of course. I

felt myself sinking down again, and I threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lot rolled free of me

"I saw young Sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a spear driven clean through his neck, and out

of his mouth and neck what looked like spirts of pink smoke in the water. And down they went clutching one

another, and turning over, and both too far gone to leave go. And in another second my helmet came a whack,

"It was lively times, I tell you! Overboard came Always with three spears in him. There was the legs of three

or four black chaps kicking about me in the water. I couldn't see much, but I saw the game was up at a glance,

gave my valve a tremendous twist, and went bubbling down again after poor Always, in as awful a state of

scare and astonishment as you can well imagine. I passed young Sanders and the nigger going up again and

struggling still a bit, and in another moment I was standing in the dim again on the deck of the Ocean

"'Gummy,' thinks I, 'here's a fix!' Niggers? At first I couldn't see anything for it but Stifle below or Stabs

above. I didn't properly understand how much air there was to last me, but I didn't feel like standing very

much more of it down below. I was hot and frightfully headyquite apart from the blue funk I was in. We'd

never repined with these beastly natives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good, coming up where I was, but

I had to do something. On the spur of the moment, I clambered over the side of the brig and landed among

the weeds, and set off through the darkness as fast as I could. I just stopped once and knelt, and twisted back

my head in the helmet and had a look up. It was a most extraordinary bright greenblue above, and the two

canoes and the boat floating there very small and distant like a kind of twisted H. And it made me feel sick to

"It was just about the most horrible ten minutes I ever had, blundering about in that darkness, pressure

something awful, like being buried in sand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothing as it

seemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. Gummy! After a bit, I found myself going up a steepish sort of

slope. I had another squint to see if anything was visible of the canoes and boats, and then kept on. I stopped

with my head a foot from the surface, and tried to see where I was going, but, of course, nothing was to be

seen but the reflection of the bottom. Then out I dashed like knocking my head through a mirror. Directly I

got my eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of beach near the forest. I had a look round, but the

natives and the brig were both hidden by a big, hummucky heap of twisted lava, the born fool in me

suggested a run for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but eased open one of the windows, and, after a bit

of a pant, went on out of the water. You'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.

"Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your head in a copper knob the size of a football,

and been thirtyfive minutes under water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy going

to work. And half way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more, coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of

"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London. I had about as much chance of cutting

back to the water as a turned turtle. I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, and waited

"But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'Jimmy Goggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does

it.' I was inclined to be a little lightheaded, I think, with all these dangers about and the change in the

pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?' I said, as if the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me

for? I'm hanged if I don't give you something to stare at,' I said, and with that I screwed up the escape valve

and turned on the compressed air from the belt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing it

must have been. I'm blessed if they'd come on a step; and presently one and then another went down on their

hands and knees. They didn't know what to make of me, and they was doing the extra polite, which was very

wise and reasonable of them. I had half a mind to edge back seaward and cut and run, but it seemed too

hopeless. A step back and they'd have been after me. And out of sheer desperation I began to march towards

them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps, and waving my blownout arms about, in a dignified manner.

"But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a difficulty,I've found that before and

since. People like ourselves, who're up to divingdresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely imagine the

effect of one on a simpleminded savage. One or two of these niggers cut and run, the others started in a

great hurry trying to knock their brains out on the ground. And on I went as slow and solemn and

sillylooking and artful as a jobbing plumber. It was evident they took me for something immense.

"Then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gestures to me as he did so, and all the

others began sharing their attention between me and something out at sea. 'What's the matter now?' I said. I

turned slowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, coming round a point, the poor old Pride of Banya

towed by a couple of canoes. The sight fairly made me sick. But they evidently expected some recognition, so

I waved my arms in a striking sort of noncommittal manner. And then I turned and stalked on towards the

trees again. At that time I was praying like mad, I remember, over and over again: 'Lord help me through

with it! Lord help me through with it!' It's only fools who know nothing of dangers can afford to laugh at

"But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away like that. They started a kind of bowing

dance about me, and sort of pressed me to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was clear to me they

didn't take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of me, and for my own part I was never less

"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages, but these poor misguided, ignorant

creatures took me straight to their kind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there. By this

time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their ignorance, and directly I set eyes on this deity I took

my cue. I started a baritone howl, 'wowwow,' very long on one note, and began waving my arms about a lot,

and then very slowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on its side and sat down on it. I wanted to sit

down badly, for divingdresses ain't much wear in the tropics. Or, to put it different like, they're a sight too

much. It took away their breath, I could see, my sitting on their joss, but in less time than a minute they made

up their minds and were hard at work worshipping me. And I can tell you I felt a bit relieved to see things

"But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might think when they came back. If they'd

seen me in the boat before I went down, and without the helmet onfor they might have been spying and

hiding since over nightthey would very likely take a different view from the others. I was in a deuce of a

"But they took it downthe whole blessed village took it down. At the cost of sitting up stiff and stern, as

much like those sitting Egyptian images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, I should

guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what it meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any

of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with luck out of

the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss!

They lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of gory muckthe

worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the Beastsand burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a

bit hungry, but I understand now how gods manage to do without eating, what with the smell of burnt

offerings about them. And they brought in a lot of the stuff they'd got off the brig and, among other stuff,

what I was a bit relieved to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressed air affair, and

then a lot of chaps and girls came in and danced about me something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the

different ways different people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet handy I'd have gone for the lot of

themthey made me feel that wild. All this time I sat as stiff as company, not knowing anything better to do.

And at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle josshouse place got a bit too shadowy for their tasteall

these here savages are afraid of the dark, you knowand I started a sort of 'Moo' noise, they built big

bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in the darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and

"I was weak and hungry, and my mind kept on behaving like a beetle on a pin, tremendous activity and

nothing done at the end of it. Come round just where it was before. There was sorrowing for the other chaps,

beastly drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young Sanders with the spear through his neck

wouldn't go out of my mind. There was the treasure down there in the Ocean Pioneer, and how one might get

it and hide it somewhere safer, and get away and come back for it. And there was the puzzle where to get

anything to eat. I tell you I was fair rambling. I was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear of behaving too

human, and so there I sat and hungered until very near the dawn. Then the village got a bit quiet, and I

couldn't stand it any longer, and I went out and got some stuff like artichokes in a bowl and some sour milk.

What was left of these I put away among the other offerings, just to give them a hint of my tastes. And in the

morning they came to worship, and found me sitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just as

they'd left me overnight. I'd got my back against the central pillar of the hut, and, practically, I was asleep.

And that's how I became a god among the heathena false god no doubt, and blasphemous, but one can't

"Now, I don't want to crack myself up as a god beyond my merits, but I must confess that while I was god to

these people they was extraordinary successful. I don't say there's anything in it, mind you. They won a battle

with another tribeI got a lot of offerings I didn't want through itthey had wonderful fishing, and their

crop of pourra was exceptional fine. And they counted the capture of the brig among the benefits I brought

'em. I must say I don't think that was a poor record for a perfectly new hand. And, though perhaps you'd

scarcely credit it, I was the tribal god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months. . . .

"What else could I do, man? But I didn't wear that divingdress all the time. I made 'em rig me up a sort of

holy of holies, and a deuce of a time I had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do.

That indeed was the great difficultymaking them understand my wishes. I couldn't let myself down by

talking their lingo badlyeven if I'd been able to speak at alland I couldn't go flapping a lot of gestures at

them. So I drew pictures in sand and sat down beside them and hooted like one o'clock. Sometimes they did

the things I wanted all right, and sometimes they did them all wrong. They was always very willing,

certainly. All the while I was puzzling how I was to get the confounded business settled. Every night before

the dawn I used to march out in full rig and go off to a place where I could see the channel in which the

Ocean Pioneer lay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, I tried to walk out to her, but the weeds and

rocks and dark clean beat me. I didn't get back till full day, and then I found all those silly niggers out on the

beach praying their seagod to return to them. I was that vexed and tired, messing and tumbling about, and

coming up and going down again, I could have punched their silly heads all round when they started

"And then came the missionary. That missionary! It was in the afternoon, and I was sitting in state in my

outer temple place, sitting on that old black stone of theirs when he came. I heard a row outside and

jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter. 'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew

what was up, in a flash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang out straight away on the spur of

the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You come inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming head.' There

was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came, Bible in hand, after the manner of thema little

sandy chap in specks and a pith helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with my copper

head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first. 'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in calico?' for I

"I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quite outclassed with a man like me. He gasped

out who was I, and I told him to read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. Down he goes to read,

and his interpreter, being of course as superstitious as any of them, took it as an act of worship and plumped

down like a shot. All my people gave a howl of triumph, and there wasn't any more business to be done in my

"But, of course, I was a fool to choke him off like that. If I'd had any sense I should have told him straight

away of the treasure and taken him into Co. I've no doubt he'd have come into Co. A child, with a few hours

to think it over, could have seen the connection between my divingdress and the loss of the Ocean Pioneer.

A week after he left I went out one morning and saw the Motherhood, the salver's ship from Starr Race,

towing up the channel and sounding. The whole blessed game was up, and all my trouble thrown away.

Gummy! How wild I felt! And guying it in that stinking silly dress! Four months!"

The sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "Think of it," he said, when he emerged to linguistic purity once

"Oh, yes! Bless him! And he pledged his reputation there was a man inside the god, and started out to see as

much with tremendous ceremony. But there wasn'the got sold again. I always did hate scenes and

explanations, and long before he came I was out of it allgoing home to Banya along the coast, hiding in

bushes by day, and thieving food from the villages by night. Only weapon, a spear. No clothes, no money.

Nothing. My face was my fortune, as the saying is. And just a squeak of eight thousand pounds of

goldfifth share. But the natives cut up rusty, thank goodness, because they thought it was him had driven

Certainly, if ever a man found a guinea when he was looking for a pin it is my good friend Professor

Gibberne. I have heard before of investigators overshooting the mark, but never quite to the extent that he has

done. He has really, this time at any rate, without any touch of exaggeration in the phrase, found something to

revolutionise human life. And that when he was simply seeking an allround nervous stimulant to bring

languid people up to the stresses of these pushful days. I have tasted the stuff now several times, and I cannot

do better than describe the effect the thing had on me. That there are astonishing experiences in store for all in

Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in Folkestone. Unless my memory plays me a

trick, his portrait at various ages has already appeared in The Strand MagazineI think late in 1899; but I am

unable to look it up because I have lent that volume to some one who has never sent it back. The reader may,

perhaps, recall the high forehead and the singularly long black eyebrows that give such a Mephistophelian

touch to his face. He occupies one of those pleasant little detached houses in the mixed style that make the

western end of the Upper Sandgate Road so interesting. His is the one with the Flemish gables and the

Moorish portico, and it is in the little room with the mullioned bay window that he works when he is down

here, and in which of an evening we have so often smoked and talked together. He is a mighty jester, but,

besides, he likes to talk to me about his work; he is one of those men who find a help and stimulus in talking,

and so I have been able to follow the conception of the New Accelerator right up from a very early stage. Of

course, the greater portion of his experimental work is not done in Folkestone, but in Gower Street, in the fine

As every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know, the special department in which Gibberne has

gained so great and deserved a reputation among physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervous

system. Upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaesthetics he is, I am told, unequalled. He is also a chemist of

considerable eminence, and I suppose in the subtle and complex jungle of riddles that centres about the

ganglion cell and the axis fibre there are little cleared places of his making, little glades of illumination, that,

until he sees fit to publish his results, are still inaccessible to every other living man. And in the last few years

he has been particularly assiduous upon this question of nervous stimulants, and already, before the discovery

of the New Accelerator, very successful with them. Medical science has to thank him for at least three

distinct and absolutely safe invigorators of unrivalled value to practising men. In cases of exhaustion the

preparation known as Gibberne's B Syrup has, I suppose, saved more lives already than any lifeboat round

"But none of these little things begin to satisfy me yet," he told me nearly a year ago. "Either they increase

the central energy without affecting the nerves or they simply increase the available energy by lowering the

nervous conductivity; and all of them are unequal and local in their operation. One wakes up the heart and

viscera and leaves the brain stupefied, one gets at the brain champagne fashion and does nothing good for the

solar plexus, and what I wantand what, if it's an earthly possibility, I mean to have is a stimulant that

stimulates all round, that wakes you up for a time from the crown of your head to the tip of your great toe,

and makes you go twoor even threeto everybody else's one. Eh? That's the thing I'm after."

"Not a doubt of it. And you'd eat double or trebleand all that. But just think what the thing would mean.

Imagine yourself with a little phial like this"he held up a little bottle of green glass and marked his points

with it"and in this precious phial is the power to think twice as fast, move twice as quickly, do twice as

"I believe so. If it isn't, I've wasted my time for a year. These various preparations of the hypophosphites, for

example, seem to show that something of the sort . . . Even if it was only one and a half times as fast it would

"If you were a statesman in a corner, for example, time rushing up against you, something urgent to be done,

"Or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and think out a case. Or a barristeror a man cramming for

"And in a duel, again," said Gibberne, "where it all depends on your quickness in pulling the trigger."

"You see," said Gibberne, "if I get it as an allround thing it will really do you no harm at allexcept

perhaps to an infinitesimal degree it brings you nearer old age. You will just have lived twice to other

"As possible," said Gibberne, and glanced at something that went throbbing by the window, "as a motorbus.

He paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped slowly on the edge of his desk with the green phial. "I think I

know the stuff. . . . Already I've got something coming." The nervous smile upon his face betrayed the

gravity of his revelation. He rarely talked of his actual experimental work unless things were very near the

end. "And it may be, it may beI shouldn't be surprisedit may even do the thing at a greater rate than

I remember we had several talks about the stuff after that. "The New Accelerator" he called it, and his tone

about it grew more confident on each occasion. Sometimes he talked nervously of unexpected physiological

results its use might have, and then he would get a little unhappy; at others he was frankly mercenary, and we

debated long and anxiously how the preparation might be turned to commercial account. "It's a good thing,"

said Gibberne, "a tremendous thing. I know I'm giving the world something, and I think it only reasonable we

should expect the world to pay. The dignity of science is all very well, but I think somehow I must have the

monopoly of the stuff for, say, ten years. I don't see why ALL the fun in life should go to the dealers in ham."

My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time. I have always had a queer little twist

towards metaphysics in my mind. I have always been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it seemed

to me that Gibberne was really preparing no less than the absolute acceleration of life. Suppose a man

repeatedly dosed with such a preparation: he would live an active and record life indeed, but he would be an

adult at eleven, middleaged at twentyfive, and by thirty well on the road to senile decay. It seemed to me

that so far Gibberne was only going to do for any one who took his drug exactly what Nature has done for the

Jews and Orientals, who are men in their teens and aged by fifty, and quicker in thought and act than we are

all the time. The marvel of drugs has always been great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man,

make him incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log, quicken this passion and allay that, all by means of

drugs, and here was a new miracle to be added to this strange armoury of phials the doctors use! But

Gibberne was far too eager upon his technical points to enter very keenly into my aspect of the question.

It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the distillation that would decide his failure or success for a

time was going forward as we talked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing was done and the New

Accelerator a tangible reality in the world. I met him as I was going up the Sandgate Hill towards

FolkestoneI think I was going to get my hair cut, and he came hurrying down to meet meI suppose he

was coming to my house to tell me at once of his success. I remember that his eyes were unusually bright and

"It's done," he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking very fast; "it's more than done. Come up to my house

"It does more, much more. It scares me. Come up and see the stuff. Taste it! Try it! It's the most amazing

stuff on earth." He gripped my arm and, walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot, went shouting

with me up the hill. A whole charabancful of people turned and stared at us in unison after the manner of

people in charsabanc. It was one of those hot, clear days that Folkestone sees so much of, every colour

incredibly bright and every outline hard. There was a breeze, of course, but not so much breeze as sufficed

"I'm not walking fast, am I?" cried Gibberne, and slackened his pace to a quick march.

"No," he said. "At the utmost a drop of water that stood in a beaker from which I had washed out the last

traces of the stuff. I took some last night, you know. But that is ancient history, now."

"It goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried Gibberne, with a dramatic gesture, flinging open his

"It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theory of vision into a perfectly new shape! . . .

Heaven knows how many thousand times. We'll try all that afterThe thing is to try the stuff now."

"Rather," said Gibberne, turning on me in his study. "There it is in that little green phial there! Unless you

I am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically adventurous. I WAS afraid. But on the other hand there

"I've tried it," he said, "and I don't look hurt by it, do I? I don't even look livery and I FEEL"

I sat down. "Give me the potion," I said. "If the worst comes to the worst it will save having my hair cut, and

that I think is one of the most hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take the mixture?"

He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy chair; his manner was suddenly affected by a

"I must warn you in the first place as soon as you've got it down to shut your eyes, and open them very

cautiously in a minute or so's time. One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of length of vibration, and

not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shock to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time,

"And the next thing is, keep still. Don't begin to whack about. You may fetch something a nasty rap if you do.

Remember you will be going several thousand times faster than you ever did before, heart, lungs, muscles,

braineverythingand you will hit hard without knowing it. You won't know it, you know. You'll feel just

as you do now. Only everything in the world will seem to be going ever so many thousand times slower than

"You'll see," said he, and took up a little measure. He glanced at the material on his desk. "Glasses," he said,

"Don't forget what I told you," he said, turning the contents of the measure into a glass in the manner of an

Italian waiter measuring whisky. "Sit with the eyes tightly shut and in absolute stillness for two minutes," he

"Bytheby," he said, "don't put your glass down. Keep it in your hand and rest your hand on your knee.

"The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank, and instantly I closed my eyes.

You know that blank nonexistence into which one drops when one has taken "gas." For an indefinite

interval it was like that. Then I heard Gibberne telling me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes.

There he stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand. It was empty, that was all the difference.

"Things are still," I said. "By Jove! yes! They ARE still. Except the sort of faint pat, patter, like rain falling

"Analysed sounds," I think he said, but I am not sure. He glanced at the window. "Have you ever seen a

I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen, as it were, corner high, in the act of flapping

"And here," he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. Naturally I winced, expecting the glass to

smash. But so far from smashing it did not even seem to stir; it hung in midairmotionless.

"Roughly speaking," said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls 16 feet in the first second. This glass is

falling 16 feet in a second now. Only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of a second.

That gives you some idea of the pace of my Accelerator." And he waved his hand round and round, over and

under the slowly sinking glass. Finally, he took it by the bottom, pulled it down, and placed it very carefully

"That seems all right," I said, and began very gingerly to raise myself from my chair. I felt perfectly well,

very light and comfortable, and quite confident in my mind. I was going fast all over. My heart, for example,

was beating a thousand times a second, but that caused me no discomfort at all. I looked out of the window.

An immovable cyclist, head down and with a frozen puff of dust behind his drivingwheel, scorched to

overtake a galloping charabanc that did not stir. I gaped in amazement at this incredible spectacle.

"Heaven knows!" he answered. "Last time I took it I went to bed and slept it off. I tell you, I was frightened.

It must have lasted some minutes, I thinkit seemed like hours. But after a bit it slows down rather

I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightenedI suppose because there were two of us. "Why

"Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand times faster than the quickest conjuring trick

Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, or imagined, or read of other people having or

imagining, that little raid I made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the New

Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a

minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the

horses of this charabanc, the end of the whiplash and the lower jaw of the conductorwho was just

beginning to yawnwere perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still.

And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen

edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people! The effect as we walked about the

thing began by being madly queer, and ended by being disagreeable. There they were, people like ourselves

and yet not like ourselves, frozen in careless attitudes, caught in midgesture. A girl and a man smiled at one

another, a leering smile that threatened to last for evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on

the rail and stared at Gibberne's house with the unwinking stare of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like

a figure of wax, and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingers towards his loosened hat.

We stared at them, we laughed at them, we made faces at them, and then a sort of disgust of them came upon

us, and we turned away and walked round in front of the cyclist towards the Leas.

He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the

And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder than ever. The band was playing in the

upper stand, though all the sound it made for us was a lowpitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last

sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. Frozen people

stood erect, strange, silent, selfconsciouslooking dummies hung unstably in midstride, promenading upon

the grass. I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slow

movement of his legs as he sank to earth. "Lord, look here!" cried Gibberne, and we halted for a moment

before a magnificent person in white faintstriped flannels, white shoes, and a Panama hat, who turned back

to wink at two gaily dressed ladies he had passed. A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation as we

could afford, is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of alert gaiety, and one remarks that the winking eye

does not completely close, that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball and a little line of

We picked our way among the bathchairs in the path. Many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost

natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see. A

purplefaced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent struggle to refold his newspaper against the

wind; there were many evidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed to a considerable

breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as our sensations went. We came out and walked a little way

from the crowd, and turned and regarded it. To see all that multitude changed, to a picture, smitten rigid, as it

were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was impossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me

with an irrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonder of it! All that I had said, and

thought, and done since the stuff had begun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so far

as the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "The New Accelerator" I began, but Gibberne

"Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps. Gods! The temptation is strong!"

There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times. Before I could expostulate with him

he had dashed forward, snatched the unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently

with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. The little brute, you know, didn't bark or

wriggle or make the slightest sign of vitality. It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent repose, and

Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it

down!" Then I said something else. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your clothes on fire.

He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge. "Gibberne," I cried, coming up, "put it

down. This heat is too much! It's our running so! Two or three miles a second! Friction of the air!"

"Friction of the air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going too fast. Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And,

Gibberne! Gibberne! I'm all over pricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see people stirring slightly. I

"It's working off," I repeated. "We're too hot and the stuff's working off! I'm wet through."

He stared at me. Then at the band, the wheezy rattle of whose performance was certainly going faster. Then

with a tremendous sweep of the arm he hurled the dog away from him and it went spinning upward, still

inanimate, and hung at last over the grouped parasols of a knot of chattering people. Gibberne was gripping

my elbow. "By Jove!" he cried. "I believeit is! A sort of hot pricking andyes. That man's moving his

But we could not get out of it sharply enough. Luckily, perhaps! For we might have run, and if we had run we

should, I believe, have burst into flames. Almost certainly we should have burst into flames! You know we

had neither of us thought of that. . . . But before we could even begin to run the action of the drug had ceased.

It was the business of a minute fraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator passed like the

drawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heard Gibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit

down," he said, and flop, down upon the turf at the edge of the Leas I satscorching as I sat. There is a patch

of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The whole stagnation seemed to wake up as I did so, the

disarticulated vibration of the band rushed together into a blast of music, the promenaders put their feet down

and walked their ways, the papers and flags began flapping, smiles passed into words, the winker finished his

wink and went on his way complacently, and all the seated people moved and spoke.

The whole world had come alive again, was going as fast as we were, or rather we were going no faster than

the rest of the world. It was like slowing down as one comes into a railway station. Everything seemed to spin

round for a second or two, I had the most transient feeling of nausea, and that was all. And the little dog

which had seemed to hang for a moment when the force of Gibberne's arm was expended fell with a swift

That was the saving of us. Unless it was for one corpulent old gentleman in a bathchair, who certainly did

start at the sight of us and afterwards regarded us at intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and, finally, I

believe, said something to his nurse about us, I doubt if a solitary person remarked our sudden appearance

among them. Plop! We must have appeared abruptly. We ceased to smoulder almost at once, though the turf

beneath me was uncomfortably hot. The attention of every oneincluding even the Amusements'

Association band, which on this occasion, for the only time in its history, got out of tunewas arrested by

the amazing fact, and the still more amazing yapping and uproar caused by the fact that a respectable,

overfed lapdog sleeping quietly to the east of the bandstand should suddenly fall through the parasol of a

lady on the westin a slightly singed condition due to the extreme velocity of its movements through the air.

In these absurd days, too, when we are all trying to be as psychic, and silly, and superstitious as possible!

People got up and trod on other people, chairs were overturned, the Leas policeman ran. How the matter

settled itself I do not knowwe were much too anxious to disentangle ourselves from the affair and get out

of range of the eye of the old gentleman in the bathchair to make minute inquiries. As soon as we were

sufficiently cool and sufficiently recovered from our giddiness and nausea and confusion of mind to do so we

stood up and, skirting the crowd, directed our steps back along the road below the Metropole towards

Gibberne's house. But amidst the din I heard very distinctly the gentleman who had been sitting beside the

lady of the ruptured sunshade using quite unjustifiable threats and language to one of those chairattendants

who have "Inspector" written on their caps. "If you didn't throw the dog," he said, "who DID?"

The sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our natural anxiety about ourselves (our clothe's

were still dreadfully hot, and the fronts of the thighs of Gibberne's white trousers were scorched a drabbish

brown), prevented the minute observations I should have liked to make on all these things. Indeed, I really

made no observations of any scientific value on that return. The bee, of course, had gone. I looked for that

cyclist, but he was already out of sight as we came into the Upper Sandgate Road or hidden from us by

traffic; the charabanc, however, with its people now all alive and stirring, was clattering along at a

We noted, however, that the windowsill on which we had stepped in getting out of the house was slightly

singed, and that the impressions of our feet on the gravel of the path were unusually deep.

So it was I had my first experience of the New Accelerator. Practically we had been running about and saying

and doing all sorts of things in the space of a second or so of time. We had lived half an hour while the band

had played, perhaps, two bars. But the effect it had upon us was that the whole world had stopped for our

convenient inspection. Considering all things, and particularly considering our rashness in venturing out of

the house, the experience might certainly have been much more disagreeable than it was. It showed, no doubt,

that Gibberne has still much to learn before his preparation is a manageable convenience, but its practicability

Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use under control, and I have several times, and without

the slightest bad result, taken measured doses under his direction; though I must confess I have not yet

ventured abroad again while under its influence. I may mention, for example, that this story has been written

at one sitting and without interruption, except for the nibbling of some chocolate, by its means. I began at

6.25, and my watch is now very nearly at the minute past the halfhour. The convenience of securing a long,

uninterrupted spell of work in the midst of a day full of engagements cannot be exaggerated. Gibberne is now

working at the quantitative handling of his preparation, with especial reference to its distinctive effects upon

different types of constitution. He then hopes to find a Retarder with which to dilute its present rather

excessive potency. The Retarder will, of course, have the reverse effect to the Accelerator; used alone it

should enable the patient to spread a few seconds over many hours of ordinary time,and so to maintain an

apathetic inaction, a glacierlike absence of alacrity, amidst the most animated or irritating surroundings. The

two things together must necessarily work an entire revolution in civilised existence. It is the beginning of

our escape from that Time Garment of which Carlyle speaks. While this Accelerator will enable us to

concentrate ourselves with tremendous impact upon any moment or occasion that demands our utmost sense

and vigour, the Retarder will enable us to pass in passive tranquillity through infinite hardship and tedium.

Perhaps I am a little optimistic about the Retarder, which has indeed still to be discovered, but about the

Accelerator there is no possible sort of doubt whatever. Its appearance upon the market in a convenient,

controllable, and assimilable form is a matter of the next few months. It will be obtainable of all chemists and

druggists, in small green bottles, at a high but, considering its extraordinary qualities, by no means excessive

price. Gibberne's Nervous Accelerator it will be called, and he hopes to be able to supply it in three strengths:

one in 200, one in 900, and one in 2000, distinguished by yellow, pink, and white labels respectively.

No doubt its use renders a great number of very extraordinary things possible; for, of course, the most

remarkable and, possibly, even criminal proceedings may be effected with impunity by thus dodging, as it

were, into the interstices of time. Like all potent preparations it will be liable to abuse. We have, however,

discussed this aspect of the question very thoroughly, and we have decided that this is purely a matter of

medical jurisprudence and altogether outside our province. We shall manufacture and sell the Accelerator,

My friend, Mr. Ledbetter, is a roundfaced little man, whose natural mildness of eye is gigantically

exaggerated when you catch the beam through his glasses, and whose deep, deliberate voice irritates irritable

people. A certain elaborate clearness of enunciation has come with him to his present vicarage from his

scholastic days, an elaborate clearness of enunciation and a certain nervous determination to be firm and

correct upon all issues, important and unimportant alike. He is a sacerdotalist and a chess player, and

suspected by many of the secret practice of the higher mathematicscreditable rather than interesting things.

His conversation is copious and given much to needless detail. By many, indeed, his intercourse is

condemned, to put it plainly, as "boring," and such have even done me the compliment to wonder why I

countenance him. But, on the other hand, there is a large faction who marvel at his countenancing such a

dishevelled, discreditable acquaintance as myself. Few appear to regard our friendship with equanimity. But

that is because they do not know of the link that binds us, of my amiable connection via Jamaica with Mr.

About that past he displays an anxious modesty. "I do not KNOW what I should do if it became known," he

says; and repeats, impressively, "I do not know WHAT I should do." As a matter of fact, I doubt if he would

do anything except get very red about the ears. But that will appear later; nor will I tell here of our first

encounter, since, as a general rulethough I am prone to break itthe end of a story should come after,

rather than before, the beginning. And the beginning of the story goes a long way back; indeed, it is now

nearly twenty years since Fate, by a series of complicated and startling manoeuvres, brought Mr. Ledbetter,

In those days I was living in Jamaica, and Mr. Ledbetter was a schoolmaster in England. He was in orders,

and already recognisably the same man that he is today: the same rotundity of visage, the same or similar

glasses, and the same faint shadow of surprise in his resting expression. He was, of course, dishevelled when

I saw him, and his collar less of a collar than a wet bandage, and that may have helped to bridge the natural

The business began at HithergateonSea, and simultaneously with Mr. Ledbetter's summer vacation.

Thither he came for a greatly needed rest, with a bright brown portmanteau marked "F. W. L.", a new

whiteandblack straw hat, and two pairs of white flannel trousers. He was naturally exhilarated at his

release from school for he was not very fond of the boys he taught. After dinner he fell into a discussion

with a talkative person established in the boardinghouse to which, acting on the advice of his aunt, he had

resorted. This talkative person was the only other man in the house. Their discussion concerned the

melancholy disappearance of wonder and adventure in these latter days, the prevalence of globetrotting, the

abolition of distance by steam and electricity, the vulgarity of advertisement, the degradation of men by

civilisation, and many such things. Particularly was the talkative person eloquent on the decay of human

courage through security, a security Mr. Ledbetter rather thoughtlessly joined him in deploring. Mr.

Ledbetter, in the first delight of emancipation from "duty," and being anxious, perhaps, to establish a

reputation for manly conviviality, partook, rather more freely than was advisable, of the excellent whisky the

He was simply eloquent beyond his sober wont, and with the finer edge gone from his judgment. And after

that long talk of the brave old days that were past forever, he went out into moonlit Hithergate alone and

He had bewailed, and now as he walked up the silent road he still bewailed, the fate that had called him to

such an uneventful life as a pedagogue's. What a prosaic existence he led, so stagnant, so colourless! Secure,

methodical, year in year out, what call was there for bravery? He thought enviously of those roving,

mediaeval days, so near and so remote, of quests and spies and condottieri and many a risky bladedrawing

business. And suddenly came a doubt, a strange doubt, springing out of some chance thought of tortures, and

Was heMr. Ledbetterreally, after all, so brave as he assumed? Would he really be so pleased to have

The talkative man had spoken enviously of crime. "The burglar," he said, "is the only true adventurer left on

earth. Think of his singlehanded fight against the whole civilised world!" And Mr. Ledbetter had echoed his

envy. "They DO have some fun out of life," Mr. Ledbetter had said. "And about the only people who do. Just

think how it must feel to wire a lawn!" And he had laughed wickedly. Now, in this franker intimacy of

selfcommunion he found himself instituting a comparison between his own brand of courage and that of the

habitual criminal. He tried to meet these insidious questionings with blank assertion. "I could do all that,"

said Mr. Ledbetter. "I long to do all that. Only I do not give way to my criminal impulses. My moral courage

"Mr. Ledbetter passed a large villa standing by itself. Conveniently situated above a quiet, practicable

balcony was a window, gaping black, wide open. At the time he scarcely marked it, but the picture of it came

with him, wove into his thoughts. He figured himself climbing up that balcony, crouchingplunging into

that dark, mysterious interior. "Bah! You would not dare," said the Spirit of Doubt. "My duty to my

It was nearly eleven, and the little seaside town was already very still. The whole world slumbered under the

moonlight. Only one warm oblong of windowblind far down the road spoke of waking life. He turned and

came back slowly towards the villa of the open window. He stood for a time outside the gate, a battlefield of

motives. "Let us put things to the test," said Doubt. "For the satisfaction of these intolerable doubts, show that

you dare go into that house. Commit a burglary in blank. That, at any rate, is no crime." Very softly he

opened and shut the gate and slipped into the shadow of the shrubbery. "This is foolish," said Mr. Ledbetter's

caution. "I expected that," said Doubt. His heart was beating fast, but he was certainly not afraid. He was

The ascent of the balcony, it was evident, would have to be done in a rush, for it was all in clear moonlight,

and visible from the gate into the avenue. A trellis thinly set with young, ambitious climbing roses made the

ascent ridiculously easy. There, in that black shadow by the stone vase of flowers, one might crouch and take

a closer view of this gaping breach in the domestic defences, the open window. For a while Mr. Ledbetter

was as still as the night, and then that insidious whisky tipped the balance. He dashed forward. He went up

the trellis with quick, convulsive movements, swung his legs over the parapet of the balcony, and dropped

panting in the shadow even as he had designed. He was trembling violently, short of breath, and his heart

pumped noisily, but his mood was exultation. He could have shouted to find he was so little afraid.

A happy line that he had learnt from Wills's "Mephistopheles" came into his mind as he crouched there. "I

feel like a cat on the tiles," he whispered to himself. It was far better than he had expected this adventurous

exhilaration. He was sorry for all poor men to whom burglary was unknown. Nothing happened. He was

And now for the window, to make the burglary complete! Must he dare do that? Its position above the front

door defined it as a landing or passage, and there were no lookingglasses or any bedroom signs about it, or

any other window on the first floor, to suggest the possibility of a sleeper within. For a time he listened under

the ledge, then raised his eyes above the sill and peered in. Close at hand, on a pedestal, and a little startling

at first, was a nearly lifesize gesticulating bronze. He ducked, and after some time he peered again. Beyond

was a broad landing, faintly gleaming; a flimsy fabric of bead curtain, very black and sharp, against a further

window; a broad staircase, plunging into a gulf of darkness below; and another ascending to the second floor.

He glanced behind him, but the stillness of the night was unbroken. "Crime," he whispered, "crime," and

scrambled softly and swiftly over the sill into the house. His feet fell noiselessly on a mat of skin. He was a

He crouched for a time, all ears and peering eyes. Outside was a scampering and rustling, and for a moment

he repented of his enterprise. A short "miaow," a spitting, and a rush into silence, spoke reassuringly of cats.

His courage grew. He stood up. Every one was abed, it seemed. So easy is it to commit a burglary, if one is

so minded. He was glad he had put it to the test. He determined to take some petty trophy, just to prove his

He peered about him, and suddenly the critical spirit arose again. Burglars did far more than such mere

elementary entrance as this: they went into rooms, they forced safes. Wellhe was not afraid. He could not

force safes, because that would be a stupid want of consideration for his hosts. But he would go into

roomshe would go upstairs. More: he told himself that he was perfectly secure; an empty house could not

be more reassuringly still. He had to clench his hands, nevertheless, and summon all his resolution before he

began very softly to ascend the dim staircase, pausing for several seconds between each step. Above was a

square landing with one open and several closed doors; and all the house was still. For a moment he stood

wondering what would happen if some sleeper woke suddenly and emerged. The open door showed a moonlit

bedroom, the coverlet white and undisturbed. Into this room he crept in three interminable minutes and took a

piece of soap for his plunder his trophy. He turned to descend even more softly than he had ascended. It

Footsteps! On the gravel outside the houseand then the noise of a latchkey, the yawn and bang of a door,

and the spitting of a match in the hall below. Mr. Ledbetter stood petrified by the sudden discovery of the

folly upon which he had come. "How on earth am I to get out of this?" said Mr. Ledbetter.

The hall grew bright with a candle flame, some heavy object bumped against the umbrellastand, and feet

were ascending the staircase. In a flash Mr. Ledbetter realised that his retreat was closed. He stood for a

moment, a pitiful figure of penitent confusion. "My goodness! What a FOOL I have been!" he whispered, and

then darted swiftly across the shadowy landing into the empty bedroom from which he had just come. He

Horrible thought! This was possibly the latecomer's room! Not a moment was to be lost! Mr. Ledbetter

stooped beside the bed, thanked Heaven for a valance, and crawled within its protection not ten seconds too

soon. He became motionless on hands and knees. The advancing candlelight appeared through the thinner

stitches of the fabric, the shadows ran wildly about, and became rigid as the candle was put down.

"Lord, what a day!" said the newcomer, blowing noisily, and it seemed he deposited some heavy burthen on

what Mr. Ledbetter, judging by the feet, decided to be a writingtable. The unseen then went to the door and

locked it, examined the fastenings of the windows carefully and pulled down the blinds, and returning sat

"WHAT a day!" he said. "Good Lord!" and blew again, and Mr. Ledbetter inclined to believe that the person

was mopping his face. His boots were good stout boots; the shadows of his legs upon the valance suggested a

formidable stoutness of aspect. After a time he removed some upper garmentsa coat and waistcoat, Mr.

Ledbetter inferred and casting them over the rail of the bed remained breathing less noisily, and as it

seemed cooling from a considerable temperature. At intervals he muttered to himself, and once he laughed

softly. And Mr. Ledbetter muttered to himself, but he did not laugh. "Of all the foolish things," said Mr.

His outlook was necessarily limited. The minute apertures between the stitches of the fabric of the valance

admitted a certain amount of light, but permitted no peeping. The shadows upon this curtain, save for those

sharply defined legs, were enigmatical, and intermingled confusingly with the florid patterning of the chintz.

Beneath the edge of the valance a strip of carpet was visible, and, by cautiously depressing his eye, Mr.

Ledbetter found that this strip broadened until the whole area of the floor came into view. The carpet was a

luxurious one, the room spacious, and, to judge by the castors and so forth of the furniture, well equipped.

What he should do he found it difficult to imagine. To wait until this person had gone to bed, and then, when

he seemed to be sleeping, to creep to the door, unlock it, and bolt headlong for that balcony seemed the only

possible thing to do. Would it be possible to jump from the balcony? The danger of it! When he thought of

the chances against him, Mr. Ledbetter despaired. He was within an ace of thrusting forth his head beside the

gentleman's legs, coughing if necessary to attract his attention, and then, smiling, apologising and explaining

his unfortunate intrusion by a few wellchosen sentences. But he found these sentences hard to choose. "No

doubt, sir, my appearance is peculiar," or, "I trust, sir, you will pardon my somewhat ambiguous appearance

Grave possibilities forced themselves on his attention. Suppose they did not believe him, what would they do

to him? Would his unblemished high character count for nothing? Technically he was a burglar, beyond

dispute. Following out this train of thought, he was composing a lucid apology for "this technical crime I

have committed," to be delivered before sentence in the dock, when the stout gentleman got up and began

walking about the room. He locked and unlocked drawers, and Mr. Ledbetter had a transient hope that he

might be undressing. But, no! He seated himself at the writingtable, and began to write and then tear up

documents. Presently the smell of burning creamlaid paper mingled with the odour of cigars in Mr.

"The position I had assumed," said Mr. Ledbetter when he told me of these things, "was in many respects an

illadvised one. A transverse bar beneath the bed depressed my head unduly, and threw a disproportionate

share of my weight upon my hands. After a time, I experienced what is called, I believe, a crick in the neck.

The pressure of my hands on the coarselystitched carpet speedily became painful. My knees, too, were

painful, my trousers being drawn tightly over them. At that time I wore rather higher collars than I do

nowtwo and a half inches, in factand I discovered what I had not remarked before, that the edge of the

one I wore was frayed slightly under the chin. But much worse than these things was an itching of my face,

which I could only relieve by violent grimacingI tried to raise my hand, but the rustle of the sleeve alarmed

me. After a time I had to desist from this relief also, becausehappily in time I discovered that my facial

contortions were shifting my glasses down my nose. Their fall would, of course, have exposed me, and as it

was they came to rest in an oblique position of by no means stable equilibrium. In addition I had a slight cold,

and an intermittent desire to sneeze or sniff caused me inconvenience. In fact, quite apart from the extreme

anxiety of my position, my physical discomfort became in a short time very considerable indeed. But I had to

After an interminable time, there began a chinking sound. This deepened into a rhythm: chink, chink,

chinktwentyfive chinks a rap on the writingtable, and a grunt from the owner of the stout legs. It

dawned upon Mr. Ledbetter that this chinking was the chinking of gold. He became incredulously curious as

it went on. His curiosity grew. Already, if that was the case, this extraordinary man must have counted some

hundreds of pounds. At last Mr. Ledbetter could resist it no longer, and he began very cautiously to fold his

arms and lower his head to the level of the floor, in the hope of peeping under the valance. He moved his feet,

and one made a slight scraping on the floor. Suddenly the chinking ceased. Mr. Ledbetter became rigid. After

a while the chinking was resumed. Then it ceased again, and everything was still, except Mr. Ledbetter's

The stillness continued. Mr. Ledbetter's head was now on the floor, and he could see the stout legs as far as

the shins. They were quite still. The feet were resting on the toes and drawn back, as it seemed, under the

chair of the owner. Everything was quite still, everything continued still. A wild hope came to Mr. Ledbetter

that the unknown was in a fit or suddenly dead, with his head upon the writingtable. . . .

The stillness continued. What had happened? The desire to peep became irresistible. Very cautiously Mr.

Ledbetter shifted his hand forward, projected a pioneer finger, and began to lift the valance immediately next

his eye. Nothing broke the stillness. He saw now the stranger's knees, saw the back of the writingtable, and

then he was staring at the barrel of a heavy revolver pointed over the writingtable at his head.

"Come out of that, you scoundrel!" said the voice of the stout gentleman in a tone of quiet concentration.

Mr. Ledbetter came right out, a little reluctantly perhaps, but without any hankypanky, and at once, even as

The valance dropped again behind Mr. Ledbetter, and he rose from allfours and held up his hands. "Dressed

like a parson," said the stout gentleman. "I'm blest if he isn't! A little chap, too! You SCOUNDREL! What

the deuce possessed you to come here tonight? What the deuce possessed you to get under my bed?"

He did not appear to require an answer, but proceeded at once to several very objectionable remarks upon Mr.

Ledbetter's personal appearance. He was not a very big man, but he looked strong to Mr. Ledbetter: he was as

stout as his legs had promised, he had rather delicatelychiselled small features distributed over a

considerable area of whitish face, and quite a number of chins. And the note of his voice had a sort of

Mr. Ledbetter, by an effort, smiled a wan propitiatory smile. He coughed. "I can quite understand" he said.

"Don't explain. It's sure to be a lie, and there's no time for explanations. What was I going to ask you? Ah!

"Have you any mates? Curse you. If you start any soapy palaver I'll shoot. Have you any mates?"

"I suppose it's a lie," said the stout man. "But you'll pay for it if it is. Why the deuce didn't you floor me when

I came upstairs? You won't get a chance to now, anyhow. Fancy getting under the bed! I reckon it's a fair cop,

"I don't see how I could prove an alibi," remarked Mr. Ledbetter, trying to show by his conversation that he

was an educated man. There was a pause. Mr. Ledbetter perceived that on a chair beside his captor was a

large black bag on a heap of crumpled papers, and that there were torn and burnt papers on the table. And in

front of these, and arranged methodically along the edge were rows and rows of little yellow rouleauxa

hundred times more gold than Mr. Ledbetter had seen in all his life before. The light of two candles, in silver

candlesticks, fell upon these. The pause continued. "It is rather fatiguing holding up my hands like this," said

"That's all right," said the fat man. "But what to do with you I don't exactly know."

"Lord!" said the fat man, "ambiguous! And goes about with his own soap, and wears a thundering great

"To be strictly accurate," said Mr. Ledbetter, and suddenly his glasses slipped off and clattered against his

The fat man changed countenance, a flash of savage resolution crossed his face, and something in the

revolver clicked. He put his other hand to the weapon. And then he looked at Mr. Ledbetter, and his eye went

"Fullcock now, anyhow," said the fat man, after a pause, and his breath seemed to catch. "But I'll tell you,

you've never been so near death before. Lord! I'M almost glad. If it hadn't been that the revolver wasn't

"A miss is as good as a mile. It's lucky for both of us it wasn't. Lord!" He blew noisily. "There's no need for

"There's only one thing to do. If I call in the police, I'm bust a little game I've got on is bust. That won't do.

If I tie you up and leave you again, the thing may be out tomorrow. Tomorrow's Sunday, and Monday's

Bank HolidayI've counted on three clear days. Shooting you's murderand hanging; and besides, it will

bust the whole blooming kernooze. I'm hanged if I can think what to do I'm hanged if I can."

"You gas as much as if you were a real parson, I'm blessed if you don't. Of all the burglars you are

theWell! No!I WON'T permit you. There isn't time. If you start off jawing again, I'll shoot right in your

stomach. See? But I know nowI know now! What we're going to do first, my man, is an examination for

concealed arms an examination for concealed arms. And look here! When I tell you to do a thing, don't

And with many elaborate precautions, and always pointing the pistol at Mr. Ledbetter's head, the stout man

stood him up and searched him for weapons. "Why, you ARE a burglar!" he said "You're a perfect amateur.

You haven't even a pistolpocket in the back of your breeches. No, you don't! Shut up, now."

So soon as the issue was decided, the stout man made Mr. Ledbetter take off his coat and roll up his

shirtsleeves, and, with the revolver at one ear, proceed with the packing his appearance had interrupted.

From the stout man's point of view that was evidently the only possible arrangement, for if he had packed, he

would have had to put down the revolver. So that even the gold on the table was handled by Mr. Ledbetter.

This nocturnal packing was peculiar. The stout man's idea was evidently to distribute the weight of the gold

as unostentatiously as possible through his luggage. It was by no means an inconsiderable weight. There was,

Mr. Ledbetter says, altogether nearly L18,000 in gold in the black bag and on the table. There were also many

little rolls of L5 banknotes. Each rouleau of L25 was wrapped by Mr. Ledbetter in paper. These rouleaux

were then put neatly in cigar boxes and distributed between a travelling trunk, a Gladstone bag, and a hatbox.

About L600 went in a tobacco tin in a dressingbag. L10 in gold and a number of L5 notes the stout man

pocketed. Occasionally he objurgated Mr. Ledbetter's clumsiness, and urged him to hurry, and several times

Mr. Ledbetter strapped the trunk and bag, and returned the stout man the keys. It was then ten minutes to

twelve, and until the stroke of midnight the stout man made him sit on the Gladstone bag, while he sat at a

reasonably safe distance on the trunk and held the revolver handy and waited. He appeared to be now in a less

aggressive mood, and having watched Mr. Ledbetter for some time, he offered a few remarks.

"From your accent I judge you are a man of some education," he said, lighting a cigar. "NoDON'T begin

that explanation of yours. I know it will be longwinded from your face, and I am much too old a liar to be

interested in other men's lying. You are, I say, a person of education. You do well to dress as a curate. Even

"You are trying to be. I know. But you didn't ought to burgle. You are not the man to burgle. You are, if I

"Do you know," said Mr. Ledbetter, trying to get a final opening, "it was that very question"

"You waste your education in burglary. You should do one of two things. Either you should forge or you

should embezzle. For my own part, I embezzle. Yes; I embezzle. What do you think a man could be doing

with all this gold but that? Ah! Listen! Midnight! . . . Ten. Eleven. Twelve. There is something very

impressive to me in that slow beating of the hours. Timespace; what mysteries they are! What mysteries. . .

And then kindly, but firmly, he induced Mr. Ledbetter to sling the dressing bag over his back by a string

across his chest, to shoulder the trunk, and, overruling a gasping protest, to take the Gladstone bag in his

disengaged hand. So encumbered, Mr. Ledbetter struggled perilously downstairs. The stout gentleman

followed with an overcoat, the hatbox, and the revolver, making derogatory remarks about Mr. Ledbetter's

"The back door," he directed, and Mr. Ledbetter staggered through a conservatory, leaving a wake of

smashed flowerpots behind him. "Never mind the crockery," said the stout man; "it's good for trade. We

Mr. Ledbetter collapsed panting on the trunk. "Last night," he gasped, "I was asleep in my little room, and I

"There's no need for you to incriminate yourself," said the stout gentleman, looking at the lock of the

revolver. He began to hum. Mr. Ledbetter made to speak, and thought better of it.

There presently came the sound of a bell, and Mr. Ledbetter was taken to the back door and instructed to

open it. A fairhaired man in yachting costume entered. At the sight of Mr. Ledbetter he started violently and

clapped his hand behind him. Then he saw the stout man. "Bingham!" he cried, "who's this?"

"Only a little philanthropic do of mineburglar I'm trying to reform. Caught him under my bed just now.

He's all right. He's a frightful ass. He'll be useful to carry some of our things."

The newcomer seemed inclined to resent Mr. Ledbetter's presence at first, but the stout man reassured him.

"He's quite alone. There's not a gang in the world would own him. No!don't start talking, for goodness'

They went out into the darkness of the garden with the trunk still bowing Mr. Ledbetter's shoulders. The man

in the yachting costume walked in front with the Gladstone bag and a pistol; then came Mr. Ledbetter like

Atlas; Mr. Bingham followed with the hatbox, coat, and revolver as before. The house was one of those that

have their gardens right up to the cliff. At the cliff was a steep wooden stairway, descending to a bathing tent

dimly visible on the beach. Below was a boat pulled up, and a silent little man with a black face stood beside

it. "A few moments' explanation," said Mr. Ledbetter; "I can assure you" Somebody kicked him, and he

They made him wade to the boat, carrying the trunk, they pulled him aboard by the shoulders and hair, they

called him no better name than "scoundrel" and "burglar" all that night. But they spoke in undertones so that

the general public was happily unaware of his ignominy. They hauled him aboard a yacht manned by strange,

unsympathetic Orientals, and partly they thrust him and partly he fell down a gangway into a noisome, dark

place, where he was to remain many dayshow many he does not know, because he lost count among other

things when he was seasick. They fed him on biscuits and incomprehensible words; they gave him water to

drink mixed with unwishedfor rum. And there were cockroaches where they put him, night and day there

were cockroaches, and in the nighttime there were rats. The Orientals emptied his pockets and took his

watch but Mr. Bingham, being appealed to, took that himself. And five or six times the five Lascarsif

they were Lascarsand the Chinaman and the negro who constituted the crew, fished him out and took him

aft to Bingham and his friend to play cribbage and euchre and threeanded whist, and to listen to their stories

Then these principals would talk to him as men talk to those who have lived a life of crime. Explanations

they would never permit, though they made it abundantly clear to him that he was the rummiest burglar they

had ever set eyes on. They said as much again and again. The fair man was of a taciturn disposition and

irascible at play; but Mr. Bingham, now that the evident anxiety of his departure from England was assuaged,

displayed a vein of genial philosophy. He enlarged upon the mystery of space and time, and quoted Kant and

Hegelor, at least, he said he did. Several times Mr. Ledbetter got as far as: "My position under your bed,

you know," but then he always had to cut, or pass the whisky, or do some such intervening thing. After his

third failure, the fair man got quite to look for this opening, and whenever Mr. Ledbetter began after that, he

would roar with laughter and hit him violently on the back. "Same old start, same old story; good old

So Mr. Ledbetter suffered for many days, twenty perhaps; and one evening he was taken, together with some

tinned provisions, over the side and put ashore on a rocky little island with a spring. Mr. Bingham came in

the boat with him, giving him good advice all the way, and waving his last attempts at an explanation aside.

"You never will be," said Mr. Bingham. "You'll never make a burglar. I'm glad you are beginning to see it. In

choosing a profession a man must study his temperament. If you don't, sooner or later you will fail. Compare

myself, for example. All my life I have been in banksI have got on in banks. I have even been a bank

manager. But was I happy? No. Why wasn't I happy? Because it did not suit my temperament. I am too

adventuroustoo versatile. Practically I have thrown it over. I do not suppose I shall ever manage a bank

again. They would be glad to get me, no doubt; but I have learnt the lesson of my temperamentat last. . . .

"Now, your temperament unfits you for crimejust as mine unfits me for respectability. I know you better

than I did, and now I do not even recommend forgery. Go back to respectable courses, my man. YOUR lay is

the philanthropic laythat is your lay. With that voice the Association for the Promotion of Snivelling

"The island we are approaching has no name apparentlyat least, there is none on the chart. You might

think out a name for it while you are therewhile you are thinking about all these things. It has quite

drinkable water, I understand. It is one of the Grenadines one of the Windward Islands. Yonder, dim and

blue, are others of the Grenadines. There are quantities of Grenadines, but the majority are out of sight. I have

often wondered what these islands are fornow, you see, I am wiser. This one at least is for you. Sooner or

later some simple native will come along and take you off. Say what you like about us thenabuse us, if you

likewe shan't care a solitary Grenadine! And herehere is half a sovereign's worth of silver. Do not waste

that in foolish dissipation when you return to civilisation. Properly used, it may give you a fresh start in life.

And do notDon't beach her, you beggars, he can wade!Do not waste the precious solitude before you in

foolish thoughts. Properly used, it may be a turningpoint in your career. Waste neither money nor time. You

will die rich. I'm sorry, but I must ask you to carry your tucker to land in your arms. No; it's not deep. Curse

that explanation of yours! There's not time. No, no, no! I won't listen. Overboard you go!"

And the falling night found Mr. Ledbetterthe Mr. Ledbetter who had complained that adventure was

deadsitting beside his cans of food, his chin resting upon his drawnup knees, staring through his glasses

He was picked up in the course of three days by a negro fisherman and taken to St. Vincent's, and from St.

Vincent's he got, by the expenditure of his last coins, to Kingston, in Jamaica. And there he might have

foundered. Even nowadays he is not a man of affairs, and then he was a singularly helpless person. He had

not the remotest idea what he ought to do. The only thing he seems to have done was to visit all the ministers

of religion he could find in the place to borrow a passage home. But he was much too dirty and incoherent

and his story far too incredible for them. I met him quite by chance. It was close upon sunset, and I was

walking out after my siesta on the road to Dunn's Battery, when I met himI was rather bored, and with a

whole evening on my handsluckily for him. He was trudging dismally towards the town. His woebegone

face and the quasiclerical cut of his duststained, filthy costume caught my humour. Our eyes met. He

hesitated. "Sir," he said, with a catching of the breath, "could you spare a few minutes for what I fear will

"Quite," he answered eagerly. "No one will believe it, alter it though I may. Yet I can assure you, sir"

He stopped hopelessly. The man's tone tickled me. He seemed an odd character. "I am," he said, "one of the

"You'll tell it better after that," I said; and without more ado led the way to a low place I knew, where such a

costume as his was unlikely to give offence. And therewith certain omissions which he subsequently

suppliedI got his story. At first I was incredulous, but as the wine warmed him, and the faint suggestion of

cringing which his misfortunes had added to his manner disappeared, I began to believe. At last, I was so far

convinced of his sincerity that I got him a bed for the night, and next day verified the banker's reference he

gave me through my Jamaica banker. And that done, I took him shopping for underwear and such like

equipments of a gentleman at large. Presently came the verified reference. His astonishing story was true. I

will not amplify our subsequent proceedings. He started for England in three days' time.

"I do not know how I can possibly thank you enough," began the letter he wrote me from England, "for all

your kindness to a total stranger," and proceeded for some time in a similar strain. "Had it not been for your

generous assistance, I could certainly never have returned in time for the resumption of my scholastic duties,

and my few minutes of reckless folly would, perhaps, have proved my ruin. As it is, I am entangled in a tissue

of lies and evasions, of the most complicated sort, to account for my sunburnt appearance and my

whereabouts. I have rather carelessly told two or three different stories, not realising the trouble this would

mean for me in the end. The truth I dare not tell. I have consulted a number of lawbooks in the British

Museum, and there is not the slightest doubt that I have connived at and abetted and aided a felony. That

scoundrel Bingham was the Hithergate bank manager, I find, and guilty of the most flagrant embezzlement.

Please, please burn this letter when readI trust you implicitly. The worst of it is, neither my aunt nor her

friend who kept the boardinghouse at which I was staying seem altogether to believe a guarded statement I

have made them practically of what actually happened. They suspect me of some discreditable adventure, but

what sort of discreditable adventure they suspect me of, I do not know. My aunt says she would forgive me if

I told her everything. I haveI have told her MORE than everything, and still she is not satisfied. It would

never do to let them know the truth of the case, of course, and so I represent myself as having been waylaid

and gagged upon the beach. My aunt wants to know WHY they waylaid and gagged me, why they took me

away in their yacht. I do not know. Can you suggest any reason? I can think of nothing. If, when you wrote,

you could write on TWO sheets so that I could show her one, and on that one if you could show clearly that I

really WAS in Jamaica this summer, and had come there by being removed from a ship, it would be of great

service to me. It would certainly add to the load of my obligation to youa load that I fear I can never fully

repay. Although if gratitude . . ." And so forth. At the end he repeated his request for me to burn the letter.

So the remarkable story of Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation ends. That breach with his aunt was not of long duration.

Mr. Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel, Hart, and Brown, of St. Paul's Churchyard, and for

many years he was well known among those interested in psychical research as a liberalminded and

conscientious investigator. He was an unmarried man, and instead of living in the suburbs, after the fashion

of his class, he occupied rooms in the Albany, near Piccadilly. He was particularly interested in the questions

of thought transference and of apparitions of the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of

experiments in conjunction with Mr. Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of

Their experiments were conducted in the following manner: At a prearranged hour Mr. Bessel shut himself in

one of his rooms in the Albany and Mr. Vincey in his sittingroom in Staple Inn, and each then fixed his

mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr. Bessel had acquired the art of selfhypnotism, and, so far as

he could, he attempted first to hypnotise himself and then to project himself as a "phantom of the living"

across the intervening space of nearly two miles into Mr. Vincey's apartment. On several evenings this was

tried without any satisfactory result, but on the fifth or sixth occasion Mr. Vincey did actually see or imagine

he saw an apparition of Mr. Bessel standing in his room. He states that the appearance, although brief, was

very vivid and real. He noticed that Mr. Bessel's face was white and his expression anxious, and, moreover,

that his hair was disordered. For a moment Mr. Vincey, in spite of his state of expectation, was too surprised

to speak or move, and in that moment it seemed to him as though the figure glanced over its shoulder and

It had been arranged that an attempt should be made to photograph any phantasm seen, but Mr. Vincey had

not the instant presence of mind to snap the camera that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he did so

he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by this partial success, he made a note of the exact time, and at

He was surprised to find Mr. Bessel's outer door standing open to the night, and the inner apartments lit and

in an extraordinary disorder. An empty champagne magnum lay smashed upon the floor; its neck had been

broken off against the inkpot on the bureau and lay beside it. An octagonal occasional table, which carried a

bronze statuette and a number of choice books, had been rudely overturned, and down the primrose paper of

the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it seemed for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of the delicate

chintz curtains had been violently torn from its rings and thrust upon the fire, so that the smell of its

smouldering filled the room. Indeed the whole place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a few

minutes Mr. Vincey, who had entered sure of finding Mr. Bessel in his easy chair awaiting him, could

scarcely believe his eyes, and stood staring helplessly at these unanticipated things.

Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the porter at the entrance lodge. "Where is Mr. Bessel?" he

asked. "Do you know that all the furniture is broken in Mr. Bessel's room?" The porter said nothing, but,

obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr. Bessel's apartment to see the state of affairs. "This settles it," he

said, surveying the lunatic confusion. "I didn't know of this. Mr. Bessel's gone off. He's mad!"

He then proceeded to tell Mr. Vincey that about half an hour previously, that is to say, at about the time of

Mr. Bessel's apparition in Mr. Vincey's rooms, the missing gentleman had rushed out of the gates of the

Albany into Vigo Street, hatless and with disordered hair, and had vanished into the direction of Bond Street.

"And as he went past me," said the porter, "he laugheda sort of gasping laugh, with his mouth open and his

According to his imitation it was anything but a pleasant laugh. "He waved his hand, with all his fingers

crooked and clawinglike that. And he said, in a sort of fierce whisper, 'LIFE!' Just that one word, 'LIFE!'"

"Dear me," said Mr. Vincey. "Tut, tut," and "Dear me!" He could think of nothing else to say. He was

naturally very much surprised. He turned from the room to the porter and from the porter to the room in the

gravest perplexity. Beyond his suggestion that probably Mr. Bessel would come back presently and explain

what had happened, their conversation was unable to proceed. "It might be a sudden toothache," said the

porter, "a very sudden and violent toothache, jumping on him suddenlylike and driving him wild. I've

broken things myself before now in such a case . . ." He thought. "If it was, why should he say 'LIFE' to me

Mr. Vincey did not know. Mr. Bessel did not return, and at last Mr. Vincey, having done some more helpless

staring, and having addressed a note of brief inquiry and left it in a conspicuous position on the bureau,

returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own premises in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a

shock. He was at a loss to account for Mr. Bessel's conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to read, but he

could not do so; he went for a short walk, and was so preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at the top of

Chancery Lane; and at lasta full hour before his usual timehe went to bed. For a considerable time he

could not sleep because of his memory of the silent confusion of Mr. Bessel's apartment, and when at length

he did attain an uneasy slumber it was at once disturbed by a very vivid and distressing dream of Mr. Bessel.

He saw Mr. Bessel gesticulating wildly, and with his face white and contorted. And, inexplicably mingled

with his appearance, suggested perhaps by his gestures, was an intense fear, an urgency to act. He even

believes that he heard the voice of his fellow experimenter calling distressfully to him, though at the time he

considered this to be an illusion. The vivid impression remained though Mr. Vincey awoke. For a space he

lay awake and trembling in the darkness, possessed with that vague, unaccountable terror of unknown

possibilities that comes out of dreams upon even the bravest men. But at last he roused himself, and turned

over and went to sleep again, only for the dream to return with enhanced vividness.

He awoke with such a strong conviction that Mr. Bessel was in overwhelming distress and need of help that

sleep was no longer possible. He was persuaded that his friend had rushed out to some dire calamity. For a

time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief, but at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all reason, lit

his gas, and dressed, and set out through the deserted streetsdeserted, save for a noiseless policeman or so

and the early news cartstowards Vigo Street to inquire if Mr. Bessel had returned.

But he never got there. As he was going down Long Acre some unaccountable impulse turned him aside out

of that street towards Covent Garden, which was just waking to its nocturnal activities. He saw the market in

front of hima queer effect of glowing yellow lights and busy black figures. He became aware of a

shouting, and perceived a figure turn the corner by the hotel and run swiftly towards him. He knew at once

that it was Mr. Bessel. But it was Mr. Bessel transfigured. He was hatless and dishevelled, his collar was torn

open, he grasped a bonehandled walkingcane near the ferrule end, and his mouth was pulled awry. And he

ran, with agile strides, very rapidly. Their encounter was the affair of an instant. "Bessel!" cried Vincey.

The running man gave no sign of recognition either of Mr. Vincey or of his own name. Instead, he cut at his

friend savagely with the stick, hitting him in the face within an inch of the eye. Mr. Vincey, stunned and

astonished, staggered back, lost his footing, and fell heavily on the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr.

Bessel leapt over him as he fell. When he looked again Mr. Bessel had vanished, and a policeman and a

number of garden porters and salesmen were rushing past towards Long Acre in hot pursuit.

With the assistance of several passersbyfor the whole street was speedily alive with running peopleMr.

Vincey struggled to his feet. He at once became the centre of a crowd greedy to see his injury. A multitude of

voices competed to reassure him of his safety, and then to tell him of the behaviour of the madman, as they

regarded Mr. Bessel. He had suddenly appeared in the middle of the market screaming "LIFE! LIFE!"

striking left and right with a bloodstained walkingstick, and dancing and shouting with laughter at each

successful blow. A lad and two women had broken heads, and he had smashed a man's wrist; a little child had

been knocked insensible, and for a time he had driven every one before him, so furious and resolute had his

behaviour been. Then he made a raid upon a coffee stall, hurled its paraffin flare through the window of the

post office, and fled laughing, after stunning the foremost of the two policemen who had the pluck to charge

Mr. Vincey's first impulse was naturally to join in the pursuit of his friend, in order if possible to save him

from the violence of the indignant people. But his action was slow, the blow had half stunned him, and while

this was still no more than a resolution came the news, shouted through the crowd, that Mr. Bessel had eluded

his pursuers. At first Mr. Vincey could scarcely credit this, but the universality of the report, and presently the

dignified return of two futile policemen, convinced him. After some aimless inquiries he returned towards

He was angry and astonished and perplexed. It appeared to him indisputable that Mr. Bessel must have gone

violently mad in the midst of his experiment in thought transference, but why that should make him appear

with a sad white face in Mr. Vincey's dreams seemed a problem beyond solution. He racked his brains in vain

to explain this. It seemed to him at last that not simply Mr. Bessel, but the order of things must be insane. But

he could think of nothing to do. He shut himself carefully into his room, lit his fireit was a gas fire with

asbestos bricksand, fearing fresh dreams if he went to bed, remained bathing his injured face, or holding

up books in a vain attempt to read, until dawn. Throughout that vigil he had a curious persuasion that Mr.

Bessel was endeavouring to speak to him, but he would not let himself attend to any such belief.

About dawn, his physical fatigue asserted itself, and he went to bed and slept at last in spite of dreaming. He

rose late, unrested and anxious, and in considerable facial pain. The morning papers had no news of Mr.

Bessel's aberrationit had come too late for them. Mr. Vincey's perplexities, to which the fever of his bruise

added fresh irritation, became at last intolerable, and, after a fruitless visit to the Albany, he went down to St.

Paul's Churchyard to Mr. Hart, Mr. Bessel's partner, and, so far as Mr. Vincey knew, his nearest friend.

He was surprised to learn that Mr. Hart, although he knew nothing of the outbreak, had also been disturbed

by a vision, the very vision that Mr. Vincey had seenMr. Bessel, white and dishevelled, pleading earnestly

by his gestures for help. That was his impression of the import of his signs. "I was just going to look him up

in the Albany when you arrived," said Mr. Hart. "I was so sure of something being wrong with him."

As the outcome of their consultation the two gentlemen decided to inquire at Scotland Yard for news of their

missing friend. "He is bound to be laid by the heels," said Mr. Hart. "He can't go on at that pace for long."

But the police authorities had not laid Mr. Bessel by the heels. They confirmed Mr. Vincey's overnight

experiences and added fresh circumstances, some of an even graver character than those he knewa list of

smashed glass along the upper half of Tottenham Court Road, an attack upon a policeman in Hampstead

Road, and an atrocious assault upon a woman. All these outrages were committed between halfpast twelve

and a quarter to two in the morning, and between those hoursand, indeed, from the very moment of Mr.

Bessel's first rush from his rooms at halfpast nine in the evening they could trace the deepening violence

of his fantastic career. For the last hour, at least from before one, that is, until a quarter to two, he had run

amuck through London, eluding with amazing agility every effort to stop or capture him.

But after a quarter to two he had vanished. Up to that hour witnesses were multitudinous. Dozens of people

had seen him, fled from him or pursued him, and then things suddenly came to an end. At a quarter to two he

had been seen running down the Euston Road towards Baker Street, flourishing a can of burning colza oil and

jerking splashes of flame therefrom at the windows of the houses he passed. But none of the policemen on

Euston Road beyond the Waxwork Exhibition, nor any of those in the side streets down which he must have

passed had he left the Euston Road, had seen anything of him. Abruptly he disappeared. Nothing of his

Here was a fresh astonishment for Mr. Vincey. He had found considerable comfort in Mr. Hart's conviction:

"He is bound to be laid by the heels before long," and in that assurance he had been able to suspend his

mental perplexities. But any fresh development seemed destined to add new impossibilities to a pile already

heaped beyond the powers of his acceptance. He found himself doubting whether his memory might not have

played him some grotesque trick, debating whether any of these things could possibly have happened; and in

the afternoon he hunted up Mr. Hart again to share the intolerable weight on his mind. He found Mr. Hart

engaged with a wellknown private detective, but as that gentleman accomplished nothing in this case, we

All that day Mr. Bessel's whereabouts eluded an unceasingly active inquiry, and all that night. And all that

day there was a persuasion in the back of Vincey's mind that Mr. Bessel sought his attention, and all through

the night Mr. Bessel with a tearstained face of anguish pursued him through his dreams. And whenever he

saw Mr. Bessel in his dreams he also saw a number of other faces, vague but malignant, that seemed to be

It was on the following day, Sunday, that Mr. Vincey recalled certain remarkable stories of Mrs. Bullock, the

medium, who was then attracting attention for the first time in London. He determined to consult her. She

was staying at the house of that wellknown inquirer, Dr. Wilson Paget, and Mr. Vincey, although he had

never met that gentleman before, repaired to him forthwith with the intention of invoking her help. But

scarcely had he mentioned the name of Bessel when Doctor Paget interrupted him. "Last nightjust at the

He left the room, and returned with a slate on which were certain words written in a handwriting, shaky

"We got it last night," said Doctor Paget. With numerous interruptions from Mr. Vincey, he proceeded to

explain how the writing had been obtained. It appears that in her seances, Mrs. Bullock passes into a

condition of trance, her eyes rolling up in a strange way under her eyelids, and her body becoming rigid. She

then begins to talk very rapidly, usually in voices other than her own. At the same time one or both of her

hands may become active, and if slates and pencils are provided they will then write messages simultaneously

with and quite independently of the flow of words from her mouth. By many she is considered an even more

remarkable medium than the celebrated Mrs. Piper. It was one of these messages, the one written by her left

hand, that Mr. Vincey now had before him. It consisted of eight words written disconnectedly: "George

Bessel . . . trial excavn. . . . Baker Street . . . help . . . starvation." Curiously enough, neither Doctor Paget nor

the two other inquirers who were present had heard of the disappearance of Mr. Besselthe news of it

appeared only in the evening papers of Saturdayand they had put the message aside with many others of a

When Doctor Paget heard Mr. Vincey's story, he gave himself at once with great energy to the pursuit of this

clue to the discovery of Mr. Bessel. It would serve no useful purpose here to describe the inquiries of Mr.

Vincey and himself; suffice it that the clue was a genuine one, and that Mr. Bessel was actually discovered by

He was found at the bottom of a detached shaft which had been sunk and abandoned at the commencement of

the work for the new electric railway near Baker Street Station. His arm and leg and two ribs were broken.

The shaft is protected by a hoarding nearly 20 feet high, and over this, incredible as it seems, Mr. Bessel, a

stout, middleaged gentleman, must have scrambled in order to fall down the shaft. He was saturated in colza

oil, and the smashed tin lay beside him, but luckily the flame had been extinguished by his fall. And his

madness had passed from him altogether. But he was, of course, terribly enfeebled, and at the sight of his

In view of the deplorable state of his flat, he was taken to the house of Dr. Hatton in Upper Baker Street. Here

he was subjected to a sedative treatment, and anything that might recall the violent crisis through which he

had passed was carefully avoided. But on the second day he volunteered a statement.

Since that occasion Mr. Bessel has several times repeated this statementto myself among other

peoplevarying the details as the narrator of real experiences always does, but never by any chance

contradicting himself in any particular. And the statement he makes is in substance as follows.

In order to understand it clearly it is necessary to go back to his experiments with Mr. Vincey before his

remarkable attack. Mr. Bessel's first attempts at selfprojection, in his experiments with Mr. Vincey, were, as

the reader will remember, unsuccessful. But through all of them he was concentrating all his power and will

upon getting out of the body"willing it with all my might," he says. At last, almost against expectation,

came success. And Mr. Bessel asserts that he, being alive, did actually, by an effort of will, leave his body

The release was, he asserts, instantaneous. "At one moment I was seated in my chair, with my eyes tightly

shut, my hands gripping the arms of the chair, doing all I could to concentrate my mind on Vincey, and then I

perceived myself outside my bodysaw my body near me, but certainly not containing me, with the hands

Nothing shakes him in his assurance of that release. He describes in a quiet, matteroffact way the new

sensation he experienced. He felt he had become impalpableso much he had expected, but he had not

expected to find himself enormously large. So, however, it would seem he became. "I was a great cloudif I

may express it that wayanchored to my body. It appeared to me, at first, as if I had discovered a greater

self of which the conscious being in my brain was only a little part. I saw the Albany and Piccadilly and

Regent Street and all the rooms and places in the houses, very minute and very bright and distinct, spread out

below me like a little city seen from a balloon. Every now and then vague shapes like drifting wreaths of

smoke made the vision a little indistinct, but at first I paid little heed to them. The thing that astonished me

most, and which astonishes me still, is that I saw quite distinctly the insides of the houses as well as the

streets, saw little people dining and talking in the private houses, men and women dining, playing billiards,

and drinking in restaurants and hotels, and several places of entertainment crammed with people. It was like

Such were Mr. Bessel's exact words as I took them down when he told me the story. Quite forgetful of Mr.

Vincey, he remained for a space observing these things. Impelled by curiosity, he says, he stooped down, and,

with the shadowy arm he found himself possessed of, attempted to touch a man walking along Vigo Street.

But he could not do so, though his finger seemed to pass through the man. Something prevented his doing

this, but what it was he finds it hard to describe. He compares the obstacle to a sheet of glass.

"I felt as a kitten may feel," he said, "when it goes for the first time to pat its reflection in a mirror." Again

and again, on the occasion when I heard him tell this story, Mr. Bessel returned to that comparison of the

sheet of glass. Yet it was not altogether a precise comparison, because, as the reader will speedily see, there

were interruptions of this generally impermeable resistance, means of getting through the barrier to the

material world again. But, naturally, there is a very great difficulty in expressing these unprecedented

A thing that impressed him instantly, and which weighed upon him throughout all this experience, was the

At first Mr. Bessel's mental state was an unemotional wonder. His thought chiefly concerned itself with

where he might be. He was out of the bodyout of his material body, at any ratebut that was not all. He

believes, and I for one believe also, that he was somewhere out of space, as we understand it, altogether. By a

strenuous effort of will he had passed out of his body into a world beyond this world, a world undreamt of,

yet lying so close to it and so strangely situated with regard to it that all things on this earth are clearly visible

both from without and from within in this other world about us. For a long time, as it seemed to him, this

realisation occupied his mind to the exclusion of all other matters, and then he recalled the engagement with

He turned his mind to locomotion in this new body in which he found himself. For a time he was unable to

shift himself from his attachment to his earthly carcass. For a time this new strange cloud body of his simply

swayed, contracted, expanded, coiled, and writhed with his efforts to free himself, and then quite suddenly

the link that bound him snapped. For a moment everything was hidden by what appeared to be whirling

spheres of dark vapour, and then through a momentary gap he saw his drooping body collapse limply, saw his

lifeless head drop sideways, and found he was driving along like a huge cloud in a strange place of shadowy

But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour about him was something more than vapour, and the

temerarious excitement of his first essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly, and then

suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded by FACES! that each roll and coil of the seeming cloudstuff

was a face. And such faces! Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces that glare

with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full

of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr.

Bessel as he passed, and the rest of their bodies was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness. Never a word

they said, never a sound from the mouths that seemed to gibber. All about him they pressed in that dreamy

silence, passing freely through the dim mistiness that was his body, gathering ever more numerously about

him. And the shadowy Mr. Bessel, now suddenly fearstricken, drove through the silent, active multitude of

So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not

occur to Mr. Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children

of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of

It says much for his resolution that, amidst the swarming cloud of these noiseless spirits of evil, he could still

think of Mr. Vincey. He made a violent effort of will and found himself, he knew not how, stooping towards

And clustering also about him, as they clustered ever about all that lives and breathes, was another multitude

of these vain voiceless shadows, longing, desiring, seeking some loophole into life.

For a space Mr. Bessel sought ineffectually to attract his friend's attention. He tried to get in front of his eyes,

to move the objects in his room, to touch him. But Mr. Vincey remained unaffected, ignorant of the being

that was so close to his own. The strange something that Mr. Bessel has compared to a sheet of glass

And at last Mr. Bessel did a desperate thing. I have told how that in some strange way he could see not only

the outside of a man as we see him, but within. He extended his shadowy hand and thrust his vague black

Then, suddenly, Mr. Vincey started like a man who recalls his attention from wandering thoughts, and it

seemed to Mr. Bessel that a little darkred body situated in the middle of Mr. Vincey's brain swelled and

glowed as he did so. Since that experience he has been shown anatomical figures of the brain, and he knows

now that this is that useless structure, as doctors call it, the pineal eye. For, strange as it will seem to many,

we have, deep in our brainswhere it cannot possibly see any earthly lightan eye! At the time this, with

the rest of the internal anatomy of the brain, was quite new to him. At the sight of its changed appearance,

however, he thrust forth his finger, and, rather fearful still of the consequences, touched this little spot. And

And at that instant it came to Mr. Bessel that evil had happened to his body, and behold! a great wind blew

through all that world of shadows and tore him away. So strong was this persuasion that he thought no more

of Mr. Vincey, but turned about forthwith, and all the countless faces drove back with him like leaves before

a gale. But he returned too late. In an instant he saw the body that he had left inert and collapsedlying,

indeed, like the body of a man just deadhad arisen, had arisen by virtue of some strength and will beyond

For a moment he watched it in wild dismay, and then he stooped towards it. But the pane of glass had closed

against him again, and he was foiled. He beat himself passionately against this, and all about him the spirits

of evil grinned and pointed and mocked. He gave way to furious anger. He compares himself to a bird that

has fluttered heedlessly into a room and is beating at the windowpane that holds it back from freedom.

And behold! the little body that had once been his was now dancing with delight. He saw it shouting, though

he could not hear its shouts; he saw the violence of its movements grow. He watched it fling his cherished

furniture about in the mad delight of existence, rend his books apart, smash bottles, drink heedlessly from the

jagged fragments, leap and smite in a passionate acceptance of living. He watched these actions in paralysed

astonishment. Then once more he hurled himself against the impassable barrier, and then with all that crew of

mocking ghosts about him, hurried back in dire confusion to Vincey to tell him of the outrage that had come

But the brain of Vincey was now closed against apparitions, and the disembodied Mr. Bessel pursued him in

vain as he hurried out into Holborn to call a cab. Foiled and terrorstricken, Mr. Bessel swept back again, to

find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious frenzy down the Burlington Arcade. . . .

And now the attentive reader begins to understand Mr. Bessel's interpretation of the first part of this strange

story. The being whose frantic rush through London had inflicted so much injury and disaster had indeed Mr.

Bessel's body, but it was not Mr. Bessel. It was an evil spirit out of that strange world beyond existence, into

which Mr. Bessel had so rashly ventured. For twenty hours it held possession of him, and for all those twenty

hours the dispossessed spiritbody of Mr. Bessel was going to and fro in that unheardof middle world of

shadows seeking help in vain. He spent many hours beating at the minds of Mr. Vincey and of his friend Mr.

Hart. Each, as we know, he roused by his efforts. But the language that might convey his situation to these

helpers across the gulf he did not know; his feeble fingers groped vainly and powerlessly in their brains.

Once, indeed, as we have already told, he was able to turn Mr. Vincey aside from his path so that he

encountered the stolen body in its career, but he could not make him understand the thing that had happened:

All through those hours the persuasion was overwhelming in Mr. Bessel's mind that presently his body would

be killed by its furious tenant, and he would have to remain in this shadowland for evermore. So that those

long hours were a growing agony of fear. And ever as he hurried to and fro in his ineffectual excitement,

innumerable spirits of that world about him mobbed him and confused his mind. And ever an envious

applauding multitude poured after their successful fellow as he went upon his glorious career.

For that, it would seem, must be the life of these bodiless things of this world that is the shadow of our world.

Ever they watch, coveting a way into a mortal body, in order that they may descend, as furies and frenzies, as

violent lusts and mad, strange impulses, rejoicing in the body they have won. For Mr. Bessel was not the only

human soul in that place. Witness the fact that he met first one, and afterwards several shadows of men, men

like himself, it seemed, who had lost their bodies even it may be as he had lost his, and wandered,

despairingly, in that lost world that is neither life nor death. They could not speak because that world is silent,

yet he knew them for men because of their dim human bodies, and because of the sadness of their faces.

But how they had come into that world he could not tell, nor where the bodies they had lost might be,

whether they still raved about the earth, or whether they were closed forever in death against return. That they

were the spirits of the dead neither he nor I believe. But Doctor Wilson Paget thinks they are the rational

At last Mr. Bessel chanced upon a place where a little crowd of such disembodied silent creatures was

gathered, and thrusting through them he saw below a brightlylit room, and four or five quiet gentlemen and

a woman, a stoutish woman dressed in black bombazine and sitting awkwardly in a chair with her head

thrown back. He knew her from her portraits to be Mrs. Bullock, the medium. And he perceived that tracts

and structures in her brain glowed and stirred as he had seen the pineal eye in the brain of Mr. Vincey glow.

The light was very fitful; sometimes it was a broad illumination, and sometimes merely a faint twilight spot,

and it shifted slowly about her brain. She kept on talking and writing with one hand. And Mr. Bessel saw that

the crowding shadows of men about him, and a great multitude of the shadow spirits of that shadowland,

were all striving and thrusting to touch the lighted regions of her brain. As one gained her brain or another

was thrust away, her voice and the writing of her hand changed. So that what she said was disorderly and

confused for the most part; now a fragment of one soul's message, and now a fragment of another's, and now

she babbled the insane fancies of the spirits of vain desire. Then Mr. Bessel understood that she spoke for the

spirit that had touch of her, and he began to struggle very furiously towards her. But he was on the outside of

the crowd and at that time he could not reach her, and at last, growing anxious, he went away to find what

had happened meanwhile to his body. For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that it

must have been killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the shaft in Baker Street, writhing furiously and

cursing with pain. Its leg and an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the evil spirit was

angry because his time had been so short and because of the painmaking violent movements and casting his

And at that Mr. Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room where the seance was going on, and

so soon as he had thrust himself within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the medium

looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance should presently end. At that a great number of the

shadows who had been striving turned away with gestures of despair. But the thought that the seance was

almost over only made Mr. Bessel the more earnest, and he struggled so stoutly with his will against the

others that presently he gained the woman's brain. It chanced that just at that moment it glowed very brightly,

and in that instant she wrote the message that Doctor Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other shadows

and the cloud of evil spirits about him had thrust Mr. Bessel away from her, and for all the rest of the seance

So he went back and watched through the long hours at the bottom of the shaft where the evil spirit lay in the

stolen body it had maimed, writhing and cursing, and weeping and groaning, and learning the lesson of pain.

And towards dawn the thing he had waited for happened, the brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit came

out, and Mr. Bessel entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did so, the

silencethe brooding silenceended; he heard the tumult of traffic and the voices of people overhead, and

that strange world that is the shadow of our worldthe dark and silent shadows of ineffectual desire and the

He lay there for the space of about three hours before he was found. And in spite of the pain and suffering of

his wounds, and of the dim damp place in which he lay; in spite of the tearswrung from him by his

physical distresshis heart was full of gladness to know that he was nevertheless back once more in the

"You can't be TOO careful WHO you marry," said Mr. Brisher, and pulled thoughtfully with a fatwristed

"Yes," said Mr. Brisher, with a solemn light in his bleary, bluegrey eyes, moving his head expressively and

breathing alcohol INTIMATELY at me. "There's lots as 'ave 'ad a try at memany as I could name in this

I surveyed the flushed countenance, the equatorial expansion, the masterly carelessness of his attire, and

heaved a sigh to think that by reason of the unworthiness of women he must needs be the last of his race.

"I was a smart young chap when I was younger," said Mr. Brisher. "I 'ad my work cut out. But I was very

He leant over the taproom table and thought visibly on the subject of my trustworthiness. I was relieved at

"I was engaged once," he said at last, with a reminiscent eye on the shuva'penny board.

He looked at me. "So near as that. Fact is" He looked about him, brought his face close to mine, lowered

his voice, and fenced off an unsympathetic world with a grimy hand. "If she ain't dead or married to some

one else or anythingI'm engaged still. Now." He confirmed this statement with nods and facial contortions.

"STILL," he said, ending the pantomime, and broke into a reckless smile at my surprise. "ME!"

"You'd 'ardly believe it," he said, "but I found a treasure. Found a regular treasure."

I fancied this was irony, and did not, perhaps, greet it with proper surprise. "Yes," he said, "I found a treasure.

And come 'ome. I tell you I could surprise you with things that has happened to me." And for some time he

I made no vulgar clamour for a story, but I became attentive to Mr. Brisher's bodily needs, and presently I led

He raised his eyebrows and tightened his mouth to express extreme respectabilitybeyond the likes of us

"It was a long way from 'ere. Essex, in fact. Near Colchester. It was when I was up in Londonin the

buildin' trade. I was a smart young chap then, I can tell you. Slim. 'Ad best clo'es 's good as anybody.

'AtSILK 'at, mind you." Mr. Brisher's hand shot above his head towards the infinite to indicate it silk hat of

the highest. "Umbrellanice umbrella with a 'orn 'andle. Savin's. Very careful I was. . . ."

He was pensive for a little while, thinking, as we must all come to think sooner or later, of the vanished

brightness of youth. But he refrained, as one may do in taprooms, from the obvious moral.

"I got to know 'er through a chap what was engaged to 'er sister. She was stopping in London for a bit with an

aunt that 'ad a 'am an' beef shop. This aunt was very particularthey was all very particular people, all 'er

people wasand wouldn't let 'er sister go out with this feller except 'er other sister, MY girl that is, went

with them. So 'e brought me into it, sort of to ease the crowding. We used to go walks in Battersea Park of a

Sunday afternoon. Me in my topper, and 'im in 'is; and the girl'swellstylish. There wasn't many in

Battersea Park 'ad the larf of us. She wasn't what you'd call pretty, but a nicer girl I never met. _I _ liked 'er

from the start, and, wellthough I say it who shouldn'tshe liked me. You know 'ow it is, I dessay?"

"And when this chap married 'er sister'im and me was great friendswhat must 'e do but arst me down to

Colchester, close by where She lived. Naturally I was introjuced to 'er people, and well, very soon, her and

"She lived at 'ome with 'er father and mother, quite the lady, in a very nice little 'ouse with a gardenand

remarkable respectable people they was. Rich you might call 'em a'most. They owned their own 'ousegot it

out of the Building Society, and cheap because the chap who had it before was a burglar and in prisonand

they 'ad a bit of free'old land, and some cottages and money 'nvestedall nice and tight: they was what you'd

call snug and warm. I tell you, I was On. Furniture too. Why! They 'ad a pianner. Jane'er name was

Janeused to play it Sundays, and very nice she played too. There wasn't 'ardly a 'im toon in the book she

"'Er father was quite a leadin' man in chapel. You should ha' seen him Sundays, interruptin' the minister and

givin' out 'ims. He had gold spectacles, I remember, and used to look over 'em at you while he sang

heartyhe was always great on singing 'earty to the Lord and when HE got out o' toon 'arf the people

went after 'imalways. 'E was that sort of man. And to walk be'ind 'im in 'is nice black clo'es'is 'at was a

brimmermade one regular proud to be engaged to such a fatherinlaw. And when the summer came I

"Now, you know there was a sort of Itch," said Mr. Brisher. "We wanted to marry, me and Jane did, and get

things settled. But 'E said I 'ad to get a proper position first. Consequently there was a Itch. Consequently,

when I went down there, I was anxious to show that I was a good useful sort of chap like. Show I could do

"And down at the bottom of their garden was a bit of wild part like. So I says to 'im, 'Why don't you 'ave a

"'Not a penny,' says I. 'I'm a dab at rockeries. Lemme make you one.' You see, I'd 'elped my brother make a

rockery in the beer garden be'ind 'is tap, so I knew 'ow to do it to rights. 'Lemme make you one,' I says. 'It's

'olidays, but I'm that sort of chap, I 'ate doing nothing,' I says. 'I'll make you one to rights.' And the long and

"Why!" said Mr. Brisher, "the treasure I'm telling you about, what's the reason why I never married."

"Yesburied wealthtreasure trove. Come out of the ground. What I kept on sayingregular treasure. . .

"It wasn't more than a foot deep, not the top of it," he said. "I'd 'ardly got thirsty like, before I come on the

"Why! Directly I 'it the box I knew it was treasure. A sort of instinct told me. Something seemed to shout

inside of me'Now's your chance lie low.' It's lucky I knew the laws of treasure trove or I'd 'ave been

"Crown bags it," I said, "all but one per cent. Go on. It's a shame. What did you do?"

"Uncovered the top of the box. There wasn't anybody in the garden or about like. Jane was 'elping 'er mother

do the 'ouse. I WAS excitedI tell you. I tried the lock and then gave a whack at the hinges. Open it came.

Silver coinsfull! Shining. It made me tremble to see 'em. And jest thenI'm blessed if the dustman didn't

come round the back of the 'ouse. It pretty nearly gave me 'eart disease to think what a fool I was to 'ave that

money showing. And directly after I 'eard the chap next door'e was 'olidaying, too I 'eard him watering

"Kicked the lid on again and covered it up like a shot, and went on digging about a yard away from itlike

mad. And my face, so to speak, was laughing on its own account till I had it hid. I tell you I was regular

scared like at my luck. I jest thought that it 'ad to be kep' close and that was all. 'Treasure,' I kep' whisperin' to

myself, 'Treasure' and ''undreds of pounds, 'undreds, 'undreds of pounds.' Whispering to myself like, and

digging like blazes. It seemed to me the box was regular sticking out and showing, like your legs do under the

sheets in bed, and I went and put all the earth I'd got out of my 'ole for the rockery slap on top of it. I WAS in

a sweat. And in the midst of it all out toddles 'er father. He didn't say anything to me, jest stood behind me

and stared, but Jane tole me afterwards when he went indoors, 'e says, 'That there jackanapes of yours,

Jane'he always called me a jackanapes some'ow'knows 'ow to put 'is back into it after all.' Seemed quite

"All I know is what I found. What I thought at the time was this. The chap who'd owned the 'ouse before 'er

father 'd been a regular slapup burglar. What you'd call a 'ighclass criminal. Used to drive 'is traplike

Peace did." Mr. Brisher meditated on the difficulties of narration and embarked on a complicated parenthesis.

"I don't know if I told you it'd been a burglar's 'ouse before it was my girl's father's, and I knew 'e'd robbed a

"Sweated," said Mr. Brisher. "Regular run orf me. All that morning," said Mr. Brisher, "I was at it, pretending

to make that rockery and wondering what I should do. I'd 'ave told 'er father p'r'aps, only I was doubtful of 'is

honestyI was afraid he might rob me of it like, and give it up to the authoritiesand besides, considering I

was marrying into the family, I thought it would be nicer like if it came through me. Put me on a better

footing, so to speak. Well, I 'ad three days before me left of my 'olidays, so there wasn't no hurry, so I

covered it up and went on digging, and tried to puzzle out 'ow I was to make sure of it. Only I couldn't.

"I thought," said Mr. Brisher, "AND I thought. Once I got regular doubtful whether I'd seen it or not, and

went down to it and 'ad it uncovered again, just as her ma came out to 'ang up a bit of washin' she'd done.

Jumps again! Afterwards I was just thinking I'd 'ave another go at it, when Jane comes to tell me dinner was

"I was in a regular daze all dinner, wondering whether that chap next door wasn't over the fence and filling 'is

pockets. But in the afternoon I got easier in my mindit seemed to me it must 'ave been there so long it was

pretty sure to stop a bit longerand I tried to get up a bit of a discussion to dror out the old man and see

"It was like this," explained Mr. Brisher, laying a friendly hand on my arm and breathing into my face to

calm me. "Just to dror 'im out, I told a story of a chap I said I knewpretendin', you knowwho'd found a

sovring in a novercoat 'e'd borrowed. I said 'e stuck to it, but I said I wasn't sure whether that was right or not.

And then the old man began. Lor'! 'e DID let me 'ave it!" Mr. Brisher affected an insincere amusement. "'E

was, wellwhat you might call a rare 'and at Snacks. Said that was the sort of friend 'e'd naturally expect me

to 'ave. Said 'e'd naturally expect that from the friend of a outofwork loafer who took up with daughters

who didn't belong to 'im. There! I couldn't tell you 'ARF 'e said. 'E went on most outrageous. I stood up to 'im

about it, just to dror 'im out. 'Wouldn't you stick to a 'arfsov', not if you found it in the street?' I says.

'Certainly not,' 'e says; 'certainly I wouldn't.' 'What! not if you found it as a sort of treasure?' 'Young man,' 'e

says, 'there's 'i'er 'thority than mineRender unto Caesar' what is it? Yes. Well, he fetched up that. A rare

'and at 'itting you over the 'ed with the Bible, was the old man. And so he went on. 'E got to such Snacks

about me at last I couldn't stand it. I'd promised Jane not to answer 'im back, but it got a bit TOO thick. II

Mr. Brisher, by means of enigmatical facework, tried to make me think he had had the best of that argument,

"I went out in a 'uff at last. But not before I was pretty sure I 'ad to lift that treasure by myself. The only thing

"Now, you'd 'ardly believe it, but all them three days I never 'ad a chance at the blessed treasure, never got

"'Stonishing thing it isn't thought of more," said Mr. Brisher. "Finding treasure's no great shakes. It's gettin' it.

I don't suppose I slep' a wink any of those nights, thinking where I was to take it, what I was to do with it, 'ow

I was to explain it. It made me regular ill. And days I was that dull, it made Jane regular 'uffy. 'You ain't the

same chap you was in London,' she says, several times. I tried to lay it on 'er father and 'is Snacks, but bless

you, she knew better. What must she 'ave but that I'd got another girl on my mind! Said I wasn't True. Well,

we had a bit of a row. But I was that set on the Treasure, I didn't seem to mind a bit Anything she said.

"Well, at last I got a sort of plan. I was always a bit good at planning, though carrying out isn't so much in my

line. I thought it all out and settled on a plan. First, I was going to take all my pockets full of these 'ere

"Well, I got to that state I couldn't think of getting at the Treasure again in the daytime, so I waited until the

night before I had to go, and then, when everything was still, up I gets and slips down to the back door,

meaning to get my pockets full. What must I do in the scullery but fall over a pail! Up gets 'er father with a

gun'e was a light sleeper was 'er father, and very suspicious and there was me: 'ad to explain I'd come

down to the pump for a drink because my waterbottle was bad. 'E didn't let me off a Snack or two over that

"Wait a bit," said Mr. Brisher. "I say, I'd made my plan. That put the kybosh on one bit, but it didn't 'urt the

general scheme not a bit. I went and I finished that rockery next day, as though there wasn't a Snack in the

world; cemented over the stones, I did, dabbed it green and everythink. I put a dab of green just to show

where the box was. They all came and looked at it, and sai 'ow nice it waseven 'e was a bit softer like to

see it, and all he said was, "It's a pity you can't always work like that, then you might get something definite

"'Yes,' I saysI couldn't 'elp it'I put a lot in that rockery,' I says, like that. See? 'I put a lot in that

"Ar'everafter all that was over, off I set for London. . . . Orf I set for London."

"On'y I wasn't going to no London," said Mr. Brisher, with sudden animation, and thrusting his face into

"I'd left the spade just where I could find it. I'd got everything planned and right. I 'ired a little trap in

Colchester, and pretended I wanted to go to Ipswich and stop the night, and come back next day, and the chap

"Midnight the 'orse and trap was 'itched by the little road that ran by the cottage where 'e livednot sixty

yards off, it wasn'tand I was at it like a good 'un. It was jest the night for such gamesovercastbut a

trifle too 'ot, and all round the sky there was summer lightning and presently a thunderstorm. Down it came.

First big drops in a sort of fizzle, then 'ail. I kep'on. I whacked at itI didn't dream the old man would 'ear. I

didn't even trouble to go quiet with the spade, and the thunder and lightning and 'ail seemed to excite me like.

I shouldn't wonder if I was singing. I got so 'ard at it I clean forgot the thunder and the 'orse and trap. I

"I couldn't no more lift it than fly. I WAS sick. I'd never thought of that I got regular wildI tell you, I

cursed. I got sort of outrageous. I didn't think of dividing it like for the minute, and even then I couldn't 'ave

took money about loose in a trap. I hoisted one end sort of wild like, and over the whole show went with a

tremenjous noise. Perfeck smash of silver. And then right on the heels of that, Flash! Lightning like the day!

and there was the back door open and the old man coming down the garden with 'is blooming old gun. He

"I tell you I was that upsetI didn't think what I was doing. I never stoppednot even to fill my pockets. I

went over the fence like a shot, and ran like one o'clock for the trap, cussing and swearing as I went. I WAS

"And will you believe me, when I got to the place where I'd left the 'orse and trap, they'd gone. Orf! When I

saw that I 'adn't a cuss left for it. I jest danced on the grass, and when I'd danced enough I started off to

Mr. Brisher was pensive for an interval. "I was done," he repeated, very bitterly.

"No fear. I'd 'ad enough of THAT blooming treasure, any'ow for a bit. Besides, I didn't know what was done

to chaps who tried to collar a treasure trove. I started off for London there and then. . . ."

"Three times, fishing like. And no answer. We'd parted in a bit of a 'uff on account of 'er being jealous. So

"I didn't know what to do. I didn't even know whether the old man knew it was me. I sort of kep' an eye open

on papers to see when he'd give up that treasure to the Crown, as I hadn't a doubt 'e would, considering 'ow

Mr. Brisher pursed his mouth and moved his head slowly from side to side. "Not 'IM," he said.

"Jane was a nice girl," he said, "a thorough nice girl mind you, if jealous, and there's no knowing I mightn't

'ave gone back to 'er after a bit. I thought if he didn't give up the treasure I might 'ave a sort of 'old on 'im. . . .

Well, one day I looks as usual under Colchesterand there I saw 'is name. What for, d'yer think?"

Mr. Brisher's voice sank to a whisper, and once more he spoke behind his hand. His manner was suddenly

suffused with a positive joy. "Issuing counterfeit coins," he said. "Counterfeit coins!"

"YesIt. Bad. Quite a long case they made of it. But they got 'im, though he dodged tremenjous. Traced 'is

Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind for a month or more, and had

overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome,

and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal grievance against her. Some indeed had

attempted quite unavailingly to convince her that Rome was not nearly such a desirable place as it was

reported to be, and others had gone so far as to suggest behind her back that she was dreadfully "stuck up"

about "that Rome of hers." And little Lily Hardhurst had told her friend Mr. Binns that so far as she was

concerned Miss Winchelsea might "go to her old Rome and stop there; SHE (Miss Lily Hardhurst) wouldn't

grieve." And the way in which Miss Winchelsea put herself upon terms of personal tenderness with Horace

and Benvenuto Cellini and Raphael and Shelley and Keatsif she had been Shelley's widow she could not

have professed a keener interest in his gravewas a matter of universal astonishment. Her dress was a

triumph of tactful discretion, sensible, but not too "touristy"Miss Winchelsea, had a great dread of being

"touristy" and her Baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its glaring red. She made a prim and

pleasant little figure on the Charing Cross platform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the great day

dawned, and she could start for Rome. The day was bright, the Channel passage would be pleasant, and all

the omens promised well. There was the gayest sense of adventure in this unprecedented departure.

She was going with two friends who had been fellowstudents with her at the training college, nice honest

girls both, though not so good at history and literature as Miss Winchelsea. They both looked up to her

immensely, though physically they had to look down, and she anticipated some pleasant times to be spent in

"stirring them up" to her own pitch of aesthetic and historical enthusiasm. They had secured seats already,

and welcomed her effusively at the carriage door. In the instant criticism of the encounter she noted that

Fanny had a slightly "touristy" leather strap, and that Helen had succumbed to a serge jacket with side

pockets, into which her hands were thrust. But they were much too happy with themselves and the expedition

for their friend to attempt any hint at the moment about these things. As soon as the first ecstasies were

overFanny's enthusiasm was a little noisy and crude, and consisted mainly in emphatic repetitions of "Just

FANCY! we're going to Rome, my dear!Rome!"they gave their attention to their fellowtravellers.

Helen was anxious to secure a compartment to themselves, and, in order to discourage intruders, got out and

planted herself firmly on the step. Miss Winchelsea peeped out over her shoulder, and made sly little remarks

about the accumulating people on the platform, at which Fanny laughed gleefully.

They were travelling with one of Mr. Thomas Gunn's partiesfourteen days in Rome for fourteen pounds.

They did not belong to the personally conducted party of courseMiss Winchelsea had seen to thatbut

they travelled with it because of the convenience of that arrangement. The people were the oddest mixture,

and wonderfully amusing. There was a vociferous redfaced polyglot personal conductor in a

pepperandsalt suit, very long in the arms and legs and very active. He shouted proclamations. When he

wanted to speak to people he stretched out an arm and held them until his purpose was accomplished. One

hand was full of papers, tickets, counterfoils of tourists. The people of the personally conducted party were, it

seemed, of two sorts; people the conductor wanted and could not find, and people he did not want and who

followed him in a steadily growing tail up and down the platform. These people seemed, indeed, to think that

their one chance of reaching Rome lay in keeping close to him. Three little old ladies were particularly

energetic in his pursuit, and at last maddened him to the pitch of clapping them into a carriage and daring

them to emerge again. For the rest of the time, one, two, or three of their heads protruded from the window

wailing enquiries about "a little wickerwork box" whenever he drew near. There was a very stout man with a

very stout wife in shiny black; there was a little old man like an aged hostler.

"What CAN such people want in Rome?" asked Miss Winchelsea. "What can it mean to them?" There was a

very tall curate in a very small straw hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camera stand. The

contrast amused Fanny very much. Once they heard some one calling for "Snooks." "I always thought that

name was invented by novelists," said Miss Winchelsea. "Fancy! Snooks. I wonder which IS Mr. Snooks."

Finally they picked out a very stout and resolute little man in a large check suit. "If he isn't Snooks, he ought

Presently the conductor discovered Helen's attempt at a corner in carriages. "Room for five," he bawled with

a parallel translation on his fingers. A party of four togethermother, father, and two daughtersblundered

in, all greatly excited. "It's all right, Ma, you let me," said one of the daughters, hitting her mother's bonnet

with a handbag she struggled to put in the rack. Miss Winchelsea detested people who banged about and

called their mother "Ma." A young man travelling alone followed. He was not at all "touristy" in his costume,

Miss Winchelsea observed; his Gladstone bag was of good pleasant leather with labels reminiscent of

Luxembourg and Ostend, and his boots, though brown, were not vulgar. He carried an overcoat on his arm.

Before these people had properly settled in their places, came an inspection of tickets and a slamming of

doors, and behold! they were gliding out of Charing Cross station on their way to Rome.

"Fancy!" cried Fanny, "we are going to Rome, my dear! Rome! I don't seem to believe it, even now."

Miss Winchelsea suppressed Fanny's emotions with a little smile, and the lady who was called "Ma"

explained to people in general why they had "cut it so close" at the station. The two daughters called her

"Ma" several times, toned her down in a tactless effective way, and drove her at last to the muttered inventory

of a basket of travelling requisites. Presently she looked up. "Lor'!" she said, "I didn't bring THEM!" Both the

daughters said "Oh, Ma!" but what "them" was did not appear. Presently Fanny produced Hare's Walks in

Rome, a sort of mitigated guidebook very popular among Roman visitors; and the father of the two

daughters began to examine his books of tickets minutely, apparently in a search after English words. When

he had looked at the tickets for a long time right way up, he turned them upside down. Then he produced a

fountain pen and dated them with considerable care. The young man, having completed an unostentatious

survey of his fellow travellers, produced a book and fell to reading. When Helen and Fanny were looking out

of the window at Chiselhurstthe place interested Fanny because the poor dear Empress of the French used

to live thereMiss Winchelsea took the opportunity to observe the book the young man held. It was not a

guidebook, but a little thin volume of poetryBOUND. She glanced at his faceit seemed a refined

pleasant face to her hasty glance. He wore a little gilt pincenez. "Do you think she lives there now?" said

For the rest of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and what she said was as pleasant and as stamped

with refinement as she could make it. Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care

that on this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. As they came under the white cliffs the

young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped beside the boat, he displayed a

graceful alacrity with the impedimenta of Miss Winchelsea and her friends. Miss Winchelsea hated nonsense,

but she was pleased to see the young man perceived at once that they were ladies, and helped them without

any violent geniality; and how nicely he showed that his civilities were to be no excuse for further intrusions.

None of her little party had been out of England before, and they were all excited and a little nervous at the

Channel passage. They stood in a little group in a good place near the middle of the boatthe young man

had taken Miss Winchelsea's carryall there and had told her it was a good placeand they watched the

white shores of Albion recede and quoted Shakespeare and made quiet fun of their fellow travellers in the

They were particularly amused at the precautions the biggersized people had taken against the little

wavescut lemons and flasks prevailed, one lady lay fulllength in a deck chair with a handkerchief over

her face, and a very broad resolute man in a bright brown "touristy" suit walked all the way from England to

France along the deck, with his legs as widely apart as Providence permitted. These were all excellent

precautions, and, nobody was ill. The personally conducted party pursued the conductor about the deck with

enquiries in a manner that suggested to Helen's mind the rather vulgar image of hens with a piece of bacon

peel, until at last he went into hiding below. And the young man with the thin volume of poetry stood at the

stern watching England receding, looking rather lonely and sad to Miss Winchelsea's eye.

And then came Calais and tumultuous novelties, and the young man had not forgotten Miss Winchelsea's

holdall and the other little things. All three girls, though they had passed government examinations in

French to any extent, were stricken with a dumb shame of their accents, and the young man was very useful.

And he did not intrude. He put them in a comfortable carriage and raised his hat and went away. Miss

Winchelsea thanked him in her best mannera pleasing, cultivated mannerand Fanny said he was "nice"

almost before he was out of earshot. "I wonder what he can be," said Helen. "He's going to Italy, because I

noticed green tickets in his book." Miss Winchelsea almost told them of the poetry, and decided not to do so.

And presently the carriage windows seized hold upon them and the young man was forgotten. It made them

feel that they were doing an educated sort of thing to travel through a country whose commonest

advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelsea made unpatriotic comparisons because there

were weedy little signboard advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the

landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted

to Hare's Walks and Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been

trying to realise, she said, that she was actually going to Rome, but she perceived at Helen's suggestion that

she was hungry, and they lunched out of their baskets very cheerfully. In the afternoon they were tired and

silent until Helen made tea. Miss Winchelsea might have dozed, only she knew Fanny slept with her mouth

open; and as their fellow passengers were two rather nice criticallooking ladies of uncertain agewho

knew French well enough to talk itshe employed herself in keeping Fanny awake. The rhythm of the train

became insistent, and the streaming landscape outside became at last quite painful to the eye. They were

The stoppage for the night was brightened by the appearance of the young man, and his manners were all that

could be desired and his French quite serviceable. His coupons availed for the same hotel as theirs, and by

chance as it seemed he sat next Miss Winchelsea at the table d'hote. In spite of her enthusiasm for Rome, she

had thought out some such possibility very thoroughly, and when he ventured to make a remark upon the

tediousness of travellinghe let the soup and fish go by before he did thisshe did not simply assent to his

proposition, but responded with another. They were soon comparing their journeys, and Helen and Fanny

were cruelly overlooked in the conversation. It was to be the same journey, they found; one day for the

galleries at Florence"from what I hear," said the young man, "it is barely enough,"and the rest at Rome.

He talked of Rome very pleasantly; he was evidently quite well read, and he quoted Horace about Soracte.

Miss Winchelsea had "done" that book of Horace for her matriculation, and was delighted to cap his

quotation. It gave a sort of tone to things, this incidenta touch of refinement to mere chatting. Fanny

expressed a few emotions, and Helen interpolated a few sensible remarks, but the bulk of the talk on the girls'

Before they reached Rome this young man was tacitly of their party. They did not know his name nor what he

was, but it seemed he taught, and Miss Winchelsea had a shrewd idea he was an extension lecturer. At any

rate he was something of that sort, something gentlemanly and refined without being opulent and impossible.

She tried once or twice to ascertain whether he came from Oxford or Cambridge, but he missed her timid

importunities. She tried to get him to make remarks about those places to see if he would say "come up" to

them instead of "go down"she knew that was how you told a 'Varsity man. He used the word

They saw as much of Mr. Ruskin's Florence as the brief time permitted; he met them in the Pitti Gallery and

went round with them, chatting brightly, and evidently very grateful for their recognition. He knew a great

deal about art, and all four enjoyed the morning immensely. It was fine to go round recognising old favourites

and finding new beauties, especially while so many people fumbled helplessly with Baedeker. Nor was he a

bit of a prig, Miss Winchelsea said, and indeed she detested prigs. He had a distinct undertone of humour, and

was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense of the quaint work of Beato Angelico. He had a

grave seriousness beneath it all, and was quick to seize the moral lessons of the pictures. Fanny went softly

among these masterpieces; she admitted "she knew so little about them," and she confessed that to her they

were "all beautiful." Fanny's "beautiful" inclined to be a little monotonous, Miss Winchelsea thought. She

had been quite glad when the last sunny Alp had vanished, because of the staccato of Fanny's admiration.

Helen said little, but Miss Winchelsea had found her a little wanting on the aesthetic side in the old days and

was not surprised; sometimes she laughed at the young man's hesitating delicate little jests and sometimes she

didn't, and sometimes she seemed quite lost to the art about them in the contemplation of the dresses of the

At Rome the young man was with them intermittently. A rather "touristy" friend of his took him away at

times. He complained comically to Miss Winchelsea. "I have only two short weeks in Rome," he said, "and

my friend Leonard wants to spend a whole day at Tivoli, looking at a waterfall."

"He's the most enthusiastic pedestrian I ever met," the young man replied, amusingly, but a little

unsatisfactorily, Miss Winchelsea thought. They had some glorious times, and Fanny could not think what

they would have done without him. Miss Winchelsea's interest and Fanny's enormous capacity for admiration

were insatiable. They never flaggedthrough pictures and sculpture galleries, immense crowded churches,

ruins and museums, Judas trees and prickly pears, wine carts and palaces, they admired their way

unflinchingly. They never saw a stone pine or a eucalyptus but they named and admired it; they never

glimpsed Soracte but they exclaimed. Their common ways were made wonderful by imaginative play. "Here

Caesar may have walked," they would say. "Raphael may have seen Soracte from this very point." They

happened on the tomb of Bibulus. "Old Bibulus," said the young man. "The oldest monument of Republican

The young man glanced quickly at her and laughed. "That was Balbus," he said. Helen reddened, but neither

Helen was more taciturn than the other three, but then she was always taciturn, and usually she took care of

the tram tickets and things like that, or kept her eye on them if the young man took them, and told him where

they were when he wanted them. Glorious times they had, these young people, in that pale brown cleanly city

of memories that was once the world. Their only sorrow was the shortness of the time. They said indeed that

the electric trams and the '70 buildings, and that criminal advertisement that glares upon the Forum, outraged

their aesthetic feelings unspeakably; but that was only part of the fun. And indeed Rome is such a wonderful

place that it made Miss Winchelsea forget some of her most carefully prepared enthusiasms at times, and

Helen, taken unawares, would suddenly admit the beauty of unexpected things. Yet Fanny and Helen would

have liked a shop window or so in the English quarter if Miss Winchelsea's uncompromising hostility to all

The intellectual and aesthetic fellowship of Miss Winchelsea and the scholarly young man passed insensibly

towards a deeper feeling. The exuberant Fanny did her best to keep pace with their recondite admiration by

playing her "beautiful," with vigour, and saying "Oh! LET'S go," with enormous appetite whenever a new

place of interest was mentioned. But Helen developed a certain want of sympathy towards the end, that

disappointed Miss Winchelsea a little. She refused to "see anything" in the face of Beatrice CenciShelley's

Beatrice Cenci!in the Barberini gallery; and one day, when they were deploring the electric trams, she said

rather snappishly that "people must get about somehow, and it's better than torturing horses up these horrid

And the day they went on the Palatinethough Miss Winchelsea did not know of thisshe remarked

suddenly to Fanny, "Don't hurry like that, my dear; THEY don't want us to overtake them. And we don't say

"I wasn't trying to overtake them," said Fanny, slackening her excessive pace; "I wasn't indeed." And for a

But Miss Winchelsea had come upon happiness. It was only when she came to look back across an

intervening tragedy that she quite realised how happy she had been, pacing among the cypressshadowed

ruins, and exchanging the very highest class of information the human mind can possess, the most refined

impressions it is possible to convey. Insensibly emotion crept into their intercourse, sunning itself openly and

pleasantly at last when Helen's modernity was not too near. Insensibly their interest drifted from the

wonderful associations about them to their more intimate and personal feelings. In a tentative way

information was supplied; she spoke allusively of her school, of her examination successes, of her gladness

that the days of "Cram" were over. He made it quite clear that he also was a teacher. They spoke of the

greatness of their calling, of the necessity of sympathy to face its irksome details, of a certain loneliness they

That was in the Colosseum, and it was as far as they got that day, because Helen returned with Fannyshe

had taken her into the upper galleries. Yet the private dreams of Miss Winchelsea, already vivid and concrete

enough, became now realistic in the highest degree. She figured that pleasant young man, lecturing in the

most edifying way to his students, herself modestly prominent as his intellectual mate and helper; she figured

a refined little home, with two bureaus, with white shelves of highclass books, and autotypes of the pictures

of Rossetti and BurneJones, with Morris's wall papers and flowers in pots of beaten copper. Indeed she

figured many things. On the Pincio the two had a few precious moments together, while Helen marched

Fanny off to see the muro Torto, and he spoke at once plainly. He said he hoped their friendship was only

beginning, that he already found her company very precious to him, that indeed it was more than that.

He became nervous, thrusting at his glasses with trembling fingers as though he fancied his emotions made

them unstable. "I should of course," he said, "tell you things about myself. I know it is rather unusual my

speaking to you like this. Only our meeting has been so accidentalor providentialand I am snatching at

things. I came to Rome expecting a lonely tour . . . and I have been so very happy, so very happy. Quite

He glanced over his shoulder and stopped. He said "Damn!" quite distinctlyand she did not condemn him

for that manly lapse into profanity. She looked and saw his friend Leonard advancing. He drew nearer; he

raised his hat to Miss Winchelsea, and his smile was almost a grin. "I've been looking for you everywhere,

Snooks! The name struck Miss Winchelsea like a blow in the face. She did not hear his reply. She thought

afterwards that Leonard must have considered her the vaguestminded person. To this day she is not sure

whether she was introduced to Leonard or not, nor what she said to him. A sort of mental paralysis was upon

Helen and Fanny were returning, there were civilities, and the young men were receding. By a great effort she

controlled herself to face the enquiring eyes of her friends. All that afternoon she lived the life of a heroine

under the indescribable outrage of that name, chatting, observing, with "Snooks" gnawing at her heart. From

the moment that it first rang upon her ears, the dream of her happiness was prostrate in the dust. All the

refinement she had figured was ruined and defaced by that cognomen's unavoidable vulgarity.

What was that refined little home to her now, spite of autotypes, Morris papers, and bureaus? Athwart it in

letters of fire ran an incredible inscription: "Mrs. Snooks." That may seem a little thing to the reader, but

consider the delicate refinement of Miss Winchelsea's mind. Be as refined as you can and then think of

writing yourself down:"Snooks." She conceived herself being addressed as Mrs. Snooks by all the people

she liked least, conceived the patronymic touched with a vague quality of insult. She figured a card of grey

and silver bearing "Winchelsea," triumphantly effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks."

Degrading confession of feminine weakness! She imagined the terrible rejoicings of certain girl friends, of

certain grocer cousins from whom her growing refinement had long since estranged her. How they would

make it sprawl across the envelope that would bring their sarcastic congratulations. Would even his pleasant

company compensate her for that? "It is impossible," she muttered; "impossible! SNOOKS!"

She was sorry for him, but not so sorry as she was for herself. For him she had a touch of indignation. To be

so nice, so refined, while all the time he was "Snooks," to hide under a pretentious gentility of demeanour the

badge sinister of his surname seemed a sort of treachery. To put it in the language of sentimental science she

There were of course moments of terrible vacillation, a period even when something almost like passion bid

her throw refinement to the winds. And there was something in her, an unexpurgated vestige of vulgarity, that

made a strenuous attempt at proving that Snooks was not so very bad a name after all. Any hovering

hesitation flew before Fanny's manner, when Fanny came with an air of catastrophe to tell that she also knew

the horror. Fanny's voice fell to a whisper when she said SNOOKS. Miss Winchelsea would not give him any

answer when at last, in the Borghese, she could have a minute with him; but she promised him a note.

She handed him that note in the little book of poetry he had lent her, the little book that had first drawn them

together. Her refusal was ambiguous, allusive. She could no more tell him why she rejected him than she

could have told a cripple of his hump. He too must feel something of the unspeakable quality of his name.

Indeed he had avoided a dozen chances of telling it, she now perceived. So she spoke of "obstacles she could

not reveal""reasons why the thing he spoke of was impossible." She addressed the note with a shiver, "E.

Things were worse than she had dreaded; he asked her to explain. How COULD she explain? Those last two

days in Rome were dreadful. She was haunted by his air of astonished perplexity. She knew she had given

him intimate hopes, she had not the courage to examine her mind thoroughly for the extent of her

encouragement. She knew he must think her the most changeable of beings. Now that she was in full retreat,

she would not even perceive his hints of a possible correspondence. But in that matter he did a thing that

seemed to her at once delicate and romantic. He made a gobetween of Fanny. Fanny could not keep the

secret, and came and told her that night under a transparent pretext of needed advice. "Mr. Snooks," said

Fanny, "wants to write to me. Fancy! I had no idea. But should I let him?" They talked it over long and

earnestly, and Miss Winchelsea was careful to keep the veil over her heart. She was already repenting his

disregarded hints. Why should she not hear of him sometimespainful though his name must be to her?

Miss Winchelsea decided it might be permitted, and Fanny kissed her goodnight with unusual emotion.

After she had gone Miss Winchelsea sat for a long time at the window of her little room. It was moonlight,

and down the street a man sang "Santa Lucia" with almost heartdissolving tenderness. . . . She sat very still.

She breathed a word very softly to herself. The word was "SNOOKS." Then she got up with a profound sigh,

and went to bed. The next morning he said to her meaningly, "I shall hear of you through your friend."

Mr. Snooks saw them off from Rome with that pathetic interrogative perplexity still on his face, and if it had

not been for Helen he would have retained Miss Winchelsea's holdall in his hand as a sort of encyclopaedic

keepsake. On their way back to England Miss Winchelsea on six separate occasions made Fanny promise to

write to her the longest of long letters. Fanny, it seemed, would be quite near Mr. Snooks. Her new

schoolshe was always going to new schoolswould be only five miles from Steely Bank, and it was in

the Steely Bank Polytechnic, and one or two firstclass schools, that Mr. Snooks did his teaching. He might

even see her at times. They could not talk much of himshe and Fanny always spoke of "him," never of Mr.

Snooks,because Helen was apt to say unsympathetic things about him. Her nature had coarsened very

much, Miss Winchelsea perceived, since the old Training College days; she had become hard and cynical.

She thought he had a weak face, mistaking refinement for weakness as people of her stamp are apt to do, and

when she heard his name was Snooks, she said she had expected something of the sort. Miss Winchelsea was

The girls parted in London, and Miss Winchelsea returned, with a new interest in life, to the Girls' High

School in which she had been an increasingly valuable assistant for the last three years. Her new interest in

life was Fanny as a correspondent, and to give her a lead she wrote her a lengthy descriptive letter within a

fortnight of her return. Fanny answered, very disappointingly. Fanny indeed had no literary gift, but it was

new to Miss Winchelsea to find herself deploring the want of gifts in a friend. That letter was even criticised

aloud in the safe solitude of Miss Winchelsea's study, and her criticism, spoken with great bitterness, was

"Twaddle!" It was full of just the things Miss Winchelsea's letter had been full of, particulars of the school.

And of Mr. Snooks, only this much: "I have had a letter from Mr. Snooks, and he has been over to see me on

two Saturday afternoons running. He talked about Rome and you; we both talked about you. Your ears must

Miss Winchelsea repressed a desire to demand more explicit information, and wrote the sweetest long letter

again. "Tell me all about yourself, dear. That journey has quite refreshed our ancient friendship, and I do so

want to keep in touch with you." About Mr. Snooks she simply wrote on the fifth page that she was glad

Fanny had seen him, and that if he SHOULD ask after her, she was to be remembered to him VERY

KINDLY (underlined). And Fanny replied most obtusely in the key of that "ancient friendship," reminding

Miss Winchelsea of a dozen foolish things of those old schoolgirl days at the training college, and saying not

For nearly a week Miss Winchelsea was so angry at the failure of Fanny as a gobetween that she could not

write to her. And then she wrote less effusively, and in her letter she asked pointblank, "Have you seen Mr.

Snooks?" Fanny's letter was unexpectedly satisfactory. "I HAVE seen Mr. Snooks," she wrote, and having

once named him she kept on about him; it was all SnooksSnooks this and Snooks that. He was to give a

public lecture, said Fanny, among other things. Yet Miss Winchelsea, after the first glow of gratification, still

found this letter a little unsatisfactory. Fanny did not report Mr. Snooks as saying anything about Miss

Winchelsea, nor as looking a little white and worn, as he ought to have been doing. And behold! before she

had replied, came a second letter from Fanny on the same theme, quite a gushing letter, and covering six

And about this second letter was a rather odd little thing that Miss Winchelsea only noticed as she reread it

the third time. Fanny's natural femininity had prevailed even against the round and clear traditions of the

training college; she was one of those shecreatures born to make all her m's and n's and u's and r's and e's

alike, and to leave her o's and a's open and her i's undotted. So that it was only after an elaborate comparison

of word with word that Miss Winchelsea felt assured Mr. Snooks was not really "Mr. Snooks" at all! In

Fanny's first letter of gush he was Mr. "Snooks," in her second the spelling was changed to Mr. "Senoks."

Miss Winchelsea's hand positively trembled as she turned the sheet overit meant so much to her. For it had

already begun to seem to her that even the name of Mrs. Snooks might be avoided at too great a price, and

suddenlythis possibility! She turned over the six sheets, all dappled with that critical name, and

everywhere the first letter had the form of an E! For a time she walked the room with a hand pressed upon her

She spent a whole day pondering this change, weighing a letter of inquiry that should be at once discreet and

effectual, weighing too what action she should take after the answer came. She was resolved that if this

altered spelling was anything more than a quaint fancy of Fanny's, she would write forthwith to Mr. Snooks.

She had now reached a stage when the minor refinements of behaviour disappear. Her excuse remained

uninvented, but she had the subject of her letter clear in her mind, even to the hint that "circumstances in my

life have changed very greatly since we talked together." But she never gave that hint. There came a third

letter from that fitful correspondent Fanny. The first line proclaimed her "the happiest girl alive."

Miss Winchelsea crushed the letter in her handthe rest unreadand sat with her face suddenly very still.

She had received it just before morning school, and had opened it when the junior mathematicians were well

under way. Presently she resumed reading with an appearance of great calm. But after the first sheet she went

on reading the third without discovering the error:"told him frankly I did not like his name," the third sheet

began. "He told me he did not like it himself you know that sort of sudden frank way he has"Miss

Winchelsea did know. "So I said 'Couldn't you change it?' He didn't see it at first. Well, you know, dear, he

had told me what it really meant; it means Sevenoaks, only it has got down to Snooksboth Snooks and

Noaks, dreadfully vulgar surnames though they be, are really worn forms of Sevenoaks. So I saideven I

have my bright ideas at times'if it got down from Sevenoaks to Snooks, why not get it back from Snooks to

Sevenoaks?' And the long and the short of it is, dear, he couldn't refuse me, and he changed his spelling there

and then to Senoks for the bills of the new lecture. And afterwards, when we are married, we shall put in the

apostrophe and make it Se'noks. Wasn't it kind of him to mind that fancy of mine, when many men would

have taken offence? But it is just like him all over; he is as kind as he is clever. Because he knew as well as I

did that I would have had him in spite of it, had he been ten times Snooks. But he did it all the same."

The class was startled by the sound of paper being viciously torn, and looked up to see Miss Winchelsea

white in the face, and with some very small pieces of paper clenched in one hand. For a few seconds they

stared at her stare, and then her expression changed back to a more familiar one. "Has any one finished

number three?" she asked in an even tone. She remained calm after that. But impositions ruled high that day.

And she spent two laborious evenings writing letters of various sorts to Fanny, before she found a decent

congratulatory vein. Her reason struggled hopelessly against the persuasion that Fanny had behaved in an

One may be extremely refined and still capable of a very sore heart. Certainly Miss Winchelsea's heart was

very sore. She had moods of sexual hostility, in which she generalised uncharitably about mankind. "He

forgot himself with me," she said. "But Fanny is pink and pretty and soft and a foola very excellent match

for a Man." And by way of a wedding present she sent Fanny a gracefully bound volume of poetry by George

Meredith, and Fanny wrote back a grossly happy letter to say that it was "ALL beautiful." Miss Winchelsea

hoped that some day Mr. Senoks might take up that slim book and think for a moment of the donor. Fanny

wrote several times before and about her marriage, pursuing that fond legend of their "ancient friendship,"

and giving her happiness in the fullest detail. And Miss Winchelsea wrote to Helen for the first time after the

Roman journey, saying nothing about the marriage, but expressing very cordial feelings.

They had been in Rome at Easter, and Fanny was married in the August vacation. She wrote a garrulous letter

to Miss Winchelsea, describing her homecoming, and the astonishing arrangements of their "teeny weeny"

little house. Mr. Se'noks was now beginning to assume a refinement in Miss Winchelsea's memory out of all

proportion to the facts of the case, and she tried in vain to imagine his cultured greatness in a "teeny weeny"

little house. "Am busy enamelling a cosey corner," said Fanny, sprawling to the end of her third sheet, "so

excuse more." Miss Winchelsea answered in her best style, gently poking fun at Fanny's arrangements and

hoping intensely that Mr. Sen'oks might see the letter. Only this hope enabled her to write at all, answering

The two latter communications contained urgent invitations for her to come to Steely Bank on a Visit during

the Christmas holidays. She tried to think that HE had told her to ask that, but it was too much like Fanny's

opulent goodnature. She could not but believe that he must be sick of his blunder by this time; and she had

more than a hope that he would presently write her a letter beginning "Dear Friend." Something subtly tragic

in the separation was a great support to her, a sad misunderstanding. To have been jilted would have been

For two years Miss Winchelsea could not go to see her friends, in spite of the reiterated invitations of Mrs.

Sevenoaksit became full Sevenoaks in the second year. Then one day near the Easter rest she felt lonely

and without a soul to understand her in the world, and her mind ran once more on what is called Platonic

friendship. Fanny was clearly happy and busy in her new sphere of domesticity, but no doubt HE had his

lonely hours. Did he ever think of those days in Romegone now beyond recalling? No one had understood

her as he had done; no one in all the world. It would be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again,

and what harm could it do? Why should she deny herself? That night she wrote a sonnet, all but the last two

lines of the octavewhich would not come, and the next day she composed a graceful little note to tell

Even at the first encounter it was evident he had changed; he seemed stouter and less nervous, and it speedily

appeared that his conversation had already lost much of its old delicacy. There even seemed a justification for

Helen's description of weakness in his facein certain lights it WAS weak. He seemed busy and

preoccupied about his affairs, and almost under the impression that Miss Winchelsea had come for the sake

of Fanny. He discussed his dinner with Fanny in an intelligent way. They only had one good long talk

together, and that came to nothing. He did not refer to Rome, and spent some time abusing a man who had

stolen an idea he had had for a textbook. It did not seem a very wonderful idea to Miss Winchelsea. She

discovered he had forgotten the names of more than half the painters whose work they had rejoiced over in

It was a sadly disappointing week, and Miss Winchelsea was glad when it came to an end. Under various

excuses she avoided visiting them again. After a time the visitor's room was occupied by their two little boys,

and Fanny's invitations ceased. The intimacy of her letters had long since faded away.

The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his

porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over

against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless,

with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and

put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction.

I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment I was surprised to find him

"Obviously," I answered, for it was FortnumRoscoe's Dream States, and the title was on the cover. He hung

silent for a space as if he sought words. "Yes," he said at last, "but they tell you nothing." I did not catch his

"I dream very little," I answered. "I doubt if I have three vivid dreams in a year."

"Your dreams don't mix with your memories?" he asked abruptly. "You don't find yourself in doubt; did this

"Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. I suppose few people do."

"Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and the like to account

for its not happening as a rule. I suppose you know something of these theories"

His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. I prepared to resume reading, and that

seemed to precipitate his next remark. He leant forward almost as though he would touch me.

"Isn't there something called consecutive dreamingthat goes on night after night?"

"Mental trouble! Yes. I dare say there are. It's the right place for them. But what I mean" He looked at his

bony knuckles. "Is that sort of thing always dreaming? IS it dreaming? Or is it something else? Mightn't it be

I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. I remember now the

"I'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion," he said. "The thing's killing me."

"If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid!so vivid . . . this" (he indicated the landscape that

went streaming by the window) "seems unreal in comparison! I can scarcely remember who I am, what

"Smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead. Dead for ever. I dreamt I was

another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a different time. I dreamt that night after

night. Night after night I woke into that other life. Fresh scenes and fresh happeningsuntil I came upon the

It was clear I was in for this dream. And after all, I had an hour before me, the light was fading fast, and

FortnumRoscoe has a dreary way with him. "Living in a different time," I said: "do you mean in some

"I don't know what year it was. I did when I was asleep, when I was dreaming, that is, but not nownot now

that I am awake. There's a lot of things I have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though I knew

them at the time when I wasI suppose it was dreaming. They called the year differently from our way of

calling the year. . . . What DID they call it?" He put his hand to his forehead. "No," said he, "I forget."

He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean to tell me his dream. As a rule I hate people

who tell their dreams, but this struck me differently. I proffered assistance even. "It began" I suggested.

"It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. And it's curious that in these dreams I am

speaking of I never remembered this life I am living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enough while it

lasted. PerhapsBut I will tell you how I find myself when I do my best to recall it all. I don't remember

anything dearly until I found myself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and

suddenly I woke upfresh and vividnot a bit dreamlikebecause the girl had stopped fanning me."

"I woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped fanning me. I was not surprised to find myself there or

anything of that sort, you understand. I did not feel I had fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up at that

point. Whatever memory I had of THIS life, this nineteenthcentury life, faded as I woke, vanished like a

dream. I knew all about myself, knew that my name was no longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about my

position in the world. I've forgotten a lot since I wokethere's a want of connectionbut it was all quite

He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward and looking up at me appealingly.

"It was not really a loggiaI don't know what to call it. It faced south. It was small. It was all in shadow

except the semicircle above the balcony that showed the sky and sea and the corner where the girl stood. I

was on a couchit was a metal couch with light striped cushionsand the girl was leaning over the balcony

with her back to me. The light of the sunrise fell on her ear and cheek. Her pretty white neck and the little

curls that nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all the grace of her body was in the cool

blue shadow. She was dressedhow can I describe it? It was easy and flowing. And altogether there she

stood, so that it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was, as though I had never seen her before. And

"I have lived threeandfifty years in this world. I have had mother, sisters, friends, wife, and daughtersall

their faces, the play of their faces, I know. But the face of this girlit is much more real to me. I can bring it

back into memory so that I see it againI could draw it or paint it. And after all"

"The face of a dreamthe face of a dream. She was beautiful. Not that beauty which is terrible, cold, and

worshipful, like the beauty of a saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort of radiation, sweet

lips that softened into smiles, and grave grey eyes. And she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with

He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then he looked up at me and went on, making no further

"You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I had ever worked for or desired for her

sake. I had been a master man away there in the north, with influence and property and a great reputation, but

none of it had seemed worth having beside her. I had come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures, with her,

and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a remnant at least of my life. While I had been in love

with her before I knew that she had any care for me, before I had imagined that she would darethat we

should dare, all my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes. It WAS dust and ashes. Night after night

and through the long days I had longed and desiredmy soul had beaten against the thing forbidden!

"But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. It's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes

and goes. Only while it's there, everything changes, everything. The thing is I came away and left them in

"The people up in the north there. You seein this dream, anyhow I had been a big man, the sort of man

men come to trust in, to group themselves about. Millions of men who had never seen me were ready to do

things and risk things because of their confidence in me. I had been playing that game for years, that big

laborious game, that vague, monstrous political game amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation. It

was a vast weltering world, and at last I had a sort of leadership against the Gangyou know it was called

the Ganga sort of compromise of scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast public emotional

stupidities and catchwords the Gang that kept the world noisy and blind year by year, and all the while that

it was drifting, drifting towards infinite disaster. But I can't expect you to understand the shades and

complications of the yearthe year something or other ahead. I had it all down to the smallest detailsin

my dream. I suppose I had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new

development I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me

thank God for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman and rejoicing

rejoicing that I had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. After all, I

thought, this is lifelove and beauty, desire and delight, are they not worth all those dismal struggles for

vague, gigantic ends? And I blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leader when I might have given my

days to love. But then, thought I, if I had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, I might have wasted

myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the thought all my being went out in love and tenderness to

my dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at last and compelled mecompelled me by her invincible

"'You are worth it,' I said, speaking without intending her to hear; 'you are worth it, my dearest one; worth

pride and praise and all things. Love! to have YOU is worth them all together.' And at the murmur of my

"'Come and see,' she criedI can hear her now'come and see the sunrise upon Monte Solaro.'

"I remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her at the balcony. She put a white hand upon my shoulder

and pointed towards great masses of limestone, flushing, as it were, into life. I looked. But first I noted the

sunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks and neck. How can I describe to you the scene we had

"I have been there," I said. "I have clambered up Monte Solaro and drunk vero Caprimuddy stuff like

"Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell meyou will know if this was indeed

Capri. For in this life I have never been there. Let me describe it. We were in a little room, one of a vast

multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of the limestone of a sort of cape, very high

above the sea. The whole island, you know, was one enormous hotel, complex beyond explaining, and on the

other side there were miles of floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flying machines came.

They called it a pleasure city. Of course, there was none of that in your time rather, I should say, IS none of

"Well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, so that one could see east and west. Eastward was a

great cliffa thousand feet high perhapscoldly grey except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it the

Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coast that faded and passed into the hot sunrise. And when one turned to the

west, distinct and near was a little bay, a little beach still in shadow. And out of that shadow rose Solaro

straight and tall, flushed and golden crested, like a beauty throned, and the white moon was floating behind

her in the sky. And before us from east to west stretched the manytinted sea all dotted with little sailing

"To the eastward, of course, these little boats were grey and very minute and clear, but to the westward they

were little boats of gold shining goldalmost like little flames. And just below us was a rock with an arch

worn through it. The blue seawater broke to green and foam all round the rock, and a galley came gliding

"I know that rock," I said. "I was nearly drowned there. It is called the Faraglioni."

"I Faraglioni? Yes, she called it that," answered the man with the white face. "There was some storybut

"Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first dream I had, that little shaded room and the beautiful air and

sky and that dear lady of mine, with her shining arms and her graceful robe, and how we sat and talked in half

whispers to one another. We talked in whispers not because there was any one to hear, but because there was

still such a freshness of mind between us that our thoughts were a little frightened, I think, to find themselves

"Presently we were hungry and we went from our apartment, going by a strange passage with a moving floor,

until we came to the great breakfast roomthere was a fountain and music. A pleasant and joyful place it

was, with its sunlight and splashing, and the murmur of plucked strings. And we sat and ate and smiled at one

"And afterwards we went on to the dancinghall. But I cannot describe that hall. The place was

enormouslarger than any building you have ever seenand in one place there was the old gate of Capri,

caught into the wall of a gallery high overhead. Light girders, stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillars

like fountains, streamed like an Aurora across the roof and interlaced, like like conjuring tricks. All about

the great circle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange dragons, and intricate and wonderful

grotesques bearing lights. The place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the newborn day. And as

we went through the throng the people turned about and looked at us, for all through the world my name and

face were known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle to come to this place. And they

looked also at the lady beside me, though half the story of how at last she had come to me was unknown or

mistold. And few of the men who were there, I know, but judged me a happy man, in spite of all the shame

"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of the rhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of

beautiful people swarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they were dressed in

splendid colours and crowned with flowers; thousands danced about the great circle beneath the white images

of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths and maidens came and went. We two danced, not the

dreary monotonies of your daysof this time, I meanbut dances that were beautiful, intoxicating. And

even now I can see my lady dancing dancing joyously. She danced, you know, with a serious face; she

danced with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressing mesmiling and caressing with

"The music was different," he murmured. "It wentI cannot describe it; but it was infinitely richer and more

"And thenit was when we had done dancinga man came to speak to me. He was a lean, resolute man,

very soberly clad for that place, and already I had marked his face watching me in the breakfasting hall, and

afterwards as we went along the passage I had avoided his eye. But now, as we sat in a little alcove, smiling

at the pleasure of all the people who went to and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and

spoke to me so that I was forced to listen. And he asked that he might speak to me for a little time apart.

"He glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her. Then he asked me suddenly if I had heard of a

great and avenging declaration that Evesham had made. Now, Evesham had always before been the man next

to myself in the leadership of that great party in the north. He was a forcible, hard and tactless man, and only

I had been able to control and soften him. It was on his account even more than my own, I think, that the

others had been so dismayed at my retreat. So this question about what he had done reawakened my old

"'I have taken no heed of any news for many days,' I said. 'What has Evesham been saying?'

"And with that the man began, nothing loath, and I must confess even I was struck by Evesham's reckless

folly in the wild and threatening words he had used. And this messenger they had sent to me not only told me

of Evesham's speech, but went on to ask counsel and to point out what need they had of me. While he talked,

"My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. I could even see myself suddenly returning

to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it. All that this man said witnessed to the disorder of the party

indeed, but not to its damage. I should go back stronger than I had come. And then I thought of my lady. You

seehow can I tell you? There were certain peculiarities of our relationshipas things are I need not tell

you about thatwhich would render her presence with me impossible. I should have had to leave her;

indeed, I should have had to renounce her clearly and openly, if I was to do all that I could do in the north.

And the man knew THAT, even as he talked to her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty

werefirst, separation, then abandonment. At the touch of that thought my dream of a return was shattered. I

turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with me.

"'What have I to do with these things now?' I said. 'I have done with them. Do you think I am coquetting with

"'Why cannot you leave me alone? I have done with these things. I have ceased to be anything but a private

"'Yes,' he answered. 'But have you thought?this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild

"'No,' I cried. 'I won't hear you. I took count of all those things, I weighed themand I have come away.'

"He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. He looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us.

"'War,' he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then turned slowly from me and walked away. I stood,

"She did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there. I turned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood

"'They want me only to do the thing they dare not do themselves,' I said. 'If they distrust Evesham they must

"I saw a doubt on her face that I had seen before, a doubt of herself and me, the first shadow of the discovery

"Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could sway her to this belief or that.

"'My dear one,' I said, 'you must not trouble over these things. There will be no war. Certainly there will be

no war. The age of wars is past. Trust me to know the justice of this case. They have no right upon me,

dearest, and no one has a right upon me. I have been free to choose my life, and I have chosen this.'

"I sat down beside her. I put an arm behind her and took her hand in mine. I set myself to drive that doubt

awayI set myself to fill her mind with pleasant things again. I lied to her, and in lying to her I lied also to

"Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to our bathingplace in the Grotta del Bovo

Marino, where it was our custom to bathe every day. We swam and splashed one another, and in that buoyant

water I seemed to become something lighter and stronger than a man. And at last we came out dripping and

rejoicing and raced among the rocks. And then I put on a dry bathingdress, and we sat to bask in the sun,

and presently I nodded, resting my head against her knee, and she put her hand upon my hair and stroked it

softly and I dozed. And behold! as it were with the snapping of the string of a violin, I was awakening, and I

"Only for a time I could not believe that all these vivid moments had been no more than the substance of a

"In truth, I could not believe it a dream for all the sobering reality of things about me. I bathed and dressed as

it were by habit, and as I shaved I argued why I of all men should leave the woman I loved to go back to

fantastic politics in the hard and strenuous north. Even if Evesham did force the world back to war, what was

that to me? I was a man, with the heart of a man, and why should I feel the responsibility of a deity for the

"You know that is not quite the way I think about affairs, about my real affairs. I am a solicitor, you know,

"The vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly unlike a dream that I kept perpetually recalling little

irrelevant details; even the ornament of a bookcover that lay on my wife's sewingmachine in the

breakfastroom recalled with the utmost vividness the gilt line that ran about the seat in the alcove where I

had talked with the messenger from my deserted party. Have you ever heard of a dream that had a quality like

"No," he answered. "But that is just what I did. I am a solicitor, you must understand, in Liverpool, and I

could not help wondering what the clients and business people I found myself talking to in my office would

think if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girl who would be born a couple of hundred years or so

hence, and worried about the politics of my greatgreatgreatgrandchildren. I was chiefly busy that day

negotiating a ninetynineyear building lease. It was a private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in

every possible way. I had an interview with him, and he showed a certain want of temper that sent me to bed

still irritated. That night I had no dream. Nor did I dream the next night, at least, to remember.

"Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I began to feel sure it WAS a dream. And then it

"When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was very different. I think it certain that four days had

also elapsed in the dream. Many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of them was back again

between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled. I began, I know, with moody musings. Why, inspite

of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest of my days to toil and stress, insults and perpetual

dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love, whom too often

I could do no other than despise, from the stress and anguish of war and infinite misrule? And after all I

might fail. THEY all sought their own narrow ends, and why should not Iwhy should not I also live as a

"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the Pleasure City, we were near the summit of

Monte Solaro and looking towards the bay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left

Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea. and sky, and Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before

us was Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of Torre

"Only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. All across the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating

palaces of the Pleasure City moored and chained. And northward were the broad floating stages that received

the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringing its thousands of

pleasureseekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to Capri and its delights. All these things, I say,

"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight that evening had to show. Five war

aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth were manoeuvring now

in the eastward sky. Evesham had astonished the world by producing them and others, and sending them to

circle here and there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken

even me by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by Heaven to

create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had no

imagination, no invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to

pull him through. I remember how we stood out upon the headland watching the squadron circling far away,

and how I weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way things must go. And then even it was

not too late. I might have gone back, I think, and saved the world. The people of the north would follow me, I

knew, granted only that in one thing I respected their moral standards. The east and south would trust me as

they would trust no other northern man. And I knew I had only to put it to her and she would have let me go. .

"Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. I had so newly thrown off the incubus of

responsibility: I was still so fresh a renegade from duty that the daylight clearness of what I OUGHT to do

had no power at all to touch my will. My will was to live, to gather pleasures and make my dear lady happy.

But though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to draw me, it could make me silent and

preoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark meditations in the

silence of the night. And as I stood and watched Evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and frothose birds of

infinite ill omenshe stood beside me watching me, perceiving the trouble indeed, but not perceiving it

clearly her eyes questioning my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was grey because the

sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of hers that she held me. She had asked me to go from her,

"At last it was the sense of her that roused me from my mood. I turned upon her suddenly and challenged her

to race down the mountain slopes. 'No,' she said, as if I jarred with her gravity, but I was resolved to end that

gravity, and made her runno one can be very grey and sad who is out of breathand when she stumbled I

ran with my hand beneath her arm. We ran down past a couple of men, who turned back staring in

astonishment at my behaviourthey must have recognised my face. And halfway down the slope came a

tumult in the air, clangclank, clangclank, and we stopped, and presently over the hillcrest those war

"They had never fought," he said. "They were just like our ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. No

one knew what they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to speculate. They were great

driving things shaped like spearheads without a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft."

"No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very commonas common as brass, for example. It was

calledlet me see." He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "I am forgetting everything,"

"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to

speak, and rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No one

could tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling

through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy. I guess the captains tried not to think too

clearly what the real thing would be like. And these flying war machines, you know, were only one sort of the

endless war contrivances that had been invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. There

were all sorts of these things that people were routing out and furbishing up; infernal things, silly things;

things that had never been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You know the silly way of these

ingenious sort of men who make these things; they turn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more

sense of the rivers they're going to divert and the lands they're going to flood!

"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, in the twilight, I foresaw it all: I saw how clearly

and inevitably things were driving for war in Evesham's silly, violent hands, and I had some inkling of what

war was bound to be under these new conditions. And even then, though I knew it was drawing near the limit

"We didn't go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro,

"'My dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, 'this is Death. This life you lead is Death. Go

"She began to weep, saying, between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as she said it, 'Go backGo back.'

"Then suddenly she fell mute, and, glancing down at her face, I read in an instant the thing she had thought to

"'No?' she asked, in surprise, and I think a little fearful at the answer to her thought.

"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have chosen. Love, I have chosen, and the world must go.

Whatever happens I will live this lifeI will live for YOU! Itnothing shall turn me aside; nothing, my

"And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking eloquently as I COULD do in that lifetalking

to exalt love, to make the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing I was deserting

something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to set aside. I bent all my mind to throw that

glamour upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself to that. We talked, and she clung to me, torn too

between all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. And at last I did make it heroic, made all

the thickening disaster of the world only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we two poor

foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion, drunken rather with that glorious delusion,

"It was my last chance. Even as we went to and fro there, the leaders of the south and east were gathering

their resolve, and the hot answer that shattered Evesham's bluffing for ever, took shape and waited. And all

over Asia, and the ocean, and the south, the air and the wires were throbbing with their warnings to

"No one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could imagine, with all these new inventions, what

horror war might bring. I believe most people still believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms and

shouting charges and triumphs and flags and bandsin a time when half the world drew its food supply from

The man with the white face paused. I glanced at him, and his face was intent on the floor of the carriage. A

little railway station, a string of loaded trucks, a signalbox, and the back of a cottage, shot by the carriage

window, and a bridge passed with a clap of noise, echoing the tumult of the train.

"After that," he said, "I dreamt often. For three weeks of nights that dream was my life. And the worst of it

was there were nights when I could not dream, when I lay tossing on a bed in THIS accursed life; and

THEREsomewhere lost to methings were happeningmomentous, terrible things. . . . I lived at

nightsmy days, my waking days, this life I am living now, became a faded, faraway dream, a drab setting,

"I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the dream, but as to what I did in the daytimeno. I could

not tellI do not remember. My memorymy memory has gone. The business of life slips from me"

He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a long time he said nothing.

"One touch of unreality," he said, in the low tone of a man who speaks to himself, "and they would have been

He was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that there was a danger of losing the rest of the story. But he

"What was there to do but flight? I had not thought the war would touch CapriI had seemed to see Capri as

being out of it all, as the contrast to it all; but two nights after the whole place was shouting and bawling,

every woman almost and every other man wore a badgeEvesham's badgeand there was no music but a

jangling warsong over and over again, and everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were

drilling. The whole island was awhirl with rumours; it was said, again and again, that fighting had begun. I

had not expected this. I had seen so little of the life of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with this violence

of the amateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was like a man who might have prevented the firing of a

magazine. The time had gone. I was no one; the vainest stripling with a badge counted for more than I. The

crowd jostled us and bawled in our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my lady

because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our own place again, ruffled and insulted my lady

white and silent, and I aquiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled with her if I could have

"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down our rock cell, and outside was the darkling

"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'I have made my choice, and I will have no hand in

these troubles. I will have nothing of this war. We have taken our lives out of all these things. This is no

"And the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered the world.

His face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. He took no heed of my curiosity.

I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning again. He broke out in an argumentative

"But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress IS life, why have we this craving for

pleasure and beauty? If there IS no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams of quiet places

are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surely it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had

brought us to this; it was Love had isolated us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty,

more glorious than all else in life, in the very shape and colour of life, and summoned me away. I had

silenced all the voices, I had answered all the questions I had come to her. And suddenly there was nothing

For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept into his cheek. He raised his open hand and

clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. He spoke, looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he

looked away. "We are but phantoms," he said, "and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud shadows

and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the

shadow of its lights, so be it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dreamstuff, but eternal and

enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved

"A dream! How can it be a dream, when it drenched a living life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all

"Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we had still a chance of getting away," he said. "All

through the night and morning that we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, we talked of escape. We

were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out

of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of

the world. We were uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though love for one another was a

"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock Caprialready scarred and gashed by the

gun emplacements and hidingplaces that were to make it a fastnesswe reckoned nothing of the imminent

slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst

the grey; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful, for all its

scars, with its countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving of

grey, broken by vineclad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear, and

puffs of almond blossom. And out under the archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats were

coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the mainland, another little string of boats came

into view, driving before the wind towards the southwest. In a little while a multitude had come out, the

"And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across the southern sky we did not heed it.

There it wasa line of little dots in the skyand then more, dotting the southeastern horizon, and then still

more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks. Now they were all thin little strokes of

blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. They

came rising and falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks, or suchlike birds moving

with a marvellous uniformity, and ever as they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The

southward wing flung itself in an arrowheaded cloud athwart the sun. And then suddenly they swept round

to the eastward and streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and clearer again until they

vanished from the sky. And after that we noted to the northward and very high Evesham's fighting machines

"Even the mutter of guns far away in the southeast seemed to us to signify nothing. . . .

"Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seeking that refuge where we might live and love.

Fatigue had come upon us, pain and many distresses. For though we were dusty and stained by our toilsome

tramping, and half starved and with the horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the peasants

for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the peninsulawith these things haunting our minds it still resulted

only in a deepening resolution to escape. O, but she was brave and patient! She who had never faced hardship

and exposure had courage for herselfand me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all

commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were

other fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent

of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were

sent northward. Many of the men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we had brought no

money to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. We had

landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by a

pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among

the marshes by Paestum, where those great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that by Paestum it

might be possible to find a boat or something, and take once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook

"A sort of soulblindness had me. Plainly I could see that we were being hemmed in; that the great net of that

giant Warfare had us in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that had come down from the north going

to and fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition

and preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spiesat any rate

a shot had gone shuddering over us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering aeroplanes.

"But all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain. . . . We were in an open place near

those great temples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate

and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady was

sitting down under a bush, resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching

to see if I could tell the distance of the firing that came and went. They were still, you know, fighting far from

each other, with those terrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns that would carry beyond

"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. I knew we were in danger, and

"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the background. They seemed to be affairs beyond

our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had

owned herself beaten and had fallen aweeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not turn

round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was

well, I thought, that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the

thing that hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark

"'No,' said I. 'Even now, I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end."

"Overhead in the sky something flashed and burst, and all about us I heard the bullets making a noise like a

handful of peas suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks

He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his

eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at last I

looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded, and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles.

"I carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my armsas though it mattered. I don't know why. They

"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed he had brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn

"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms. . . . Silent

after the first babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though

nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed. . . . It was tremendously still there, the sun

high, and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were stillin spite of the

"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and that the battle went away to the west.

One aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. I remember thatthough it didn't interest me in the least. It

didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you knowflapping for a time in the water. I could see it

"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased. Each time that happened all the

lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed

"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes a trivial conversation, "is that I didn't

THINKI didn't think at all. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stonesin a sort of lethargystagnant.

"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing that day. I know I found myself in my office,

with my letters all slit open in front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that

in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum temple with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters like

Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this

passing of time. I turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of Now or never.

"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to have suddenly awakened out of a great

apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body.

"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men were coming into the solitude and that

"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into sightfirst one man with a yellow face,

dressed in a uniform of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of the old wall

of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung,

"And further away I saw others and then more at another point in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in

"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and his men came tumbling down the

wall and into the high weeds towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and led them. He came

"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I had seen they meant to come to the

"He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently he spoke to his men and came forward. He

"I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. I told him again very patiently and clearly: 'You

"Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrow face, with dull grey eyes, and a black

moustache. He had a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligible

"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occur to me. As I tried to explain to him he

"He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes. I saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into themdelight.

He stopped abruptly. I became aware of a change in the rhythm of the train. The brakes lifted their voices and

the carriage jarred and jerked. This present world insisted upon itself, became clamorous. I saw through the

steamy window huge electric lights glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty

carriages passing by, and then a signalbox, hoisting its constellation of green and red into the murky London

"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment no fear, no painbut just amazement,

that I felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home into my body. It didn't hurt, you know. It didn't hurt at all."

The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first rapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping

"There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and then darkness sweeping over everything. The hot,

brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out of existence"

The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood regarding us. The sounds of doors

slamming, and the hoofclatter of cabhorses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the

London cobblestones, came to my ears. A truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform.

"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things."

"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that fought and tore."