The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations Read online

  NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL.

  I must now give you some fuller particulars of my history. I am thedaughter of a civil engineer, Steven Lally by name, who was sounfortunate as to die suddenly at the outset of his career, and beforehe had accumulated sufficient means to support his wife and her twochildren. My mother contrived to keep the small household going onresources which must have been incredibly small; we lived in a remotecountry village, because most of the necessaries of life were cheaperthan in a town, but even so we were brought up with the severesteconomy. My father was a clever and well-read man, and left behind him asmall but select collection of books, containing the best Greek, Latin,and English classics, and these books were the only amusement wepossessed. My brother, I remember, learned Latin out of Descartes'"Meditationes," and I, in place of the little tales which children areusually told to read, had nothing more charming than a translation ofthe "Gesta Romanorum." We grew up thus, quiet and studious children, andin course of time my brother provided for himself in the manner I havementioned. I continued to live at home; my poor mother had become aninvalid, and demanded my continual care, and about two years ago shedied after many months of painful illness. My situation was a terribleone; the shabby furniture barely sufficed to pay the debts I had beenforced to contract, and the books I despatched to my brother, knowinghow he would value them. I was absolutely alone. I was aware how poorlymy brother was paid; and though I came up to London in the hope offinding employment, with the understanding that he would defray myexpenses, I swore it should only be for a month, and that if I could notin that time find some work, I would starve rather than deprive him ofthe few miserable pounds he had laid by for his day of trouble. I took alittle room in a distant suburb, the cheapest that I could find. I livedon bread and tea, and I spent my time in vain answering ofadvertisements, and vainer walks to addresses I had noted. Day followedon day, and week on week, and still I was unsuccessful, till at last theterm I had appointed drew to a close, and I saw before me the grimprospect of slowly dying of starvation. My landlady was good-natured inher way; she knew the slenderness of my means, and I am sure that shewould not have turned me out of doors. It remained for me then to goaway, and to try and die in some quiet place. It was winter then, and athick white fog gathered in the early part of the afternoon, becomingmore dense as the day wore on; it was a Sunday, I remember, and thepeople of the house were at chapel. At about three o'clock I crept outand walked away as quickly as I could, for I was weak from abstinence.The white mist wrapped all the streets in silence, and a hard frost hadgathered thick upon the bare branches of the trees, and frost crystalsglittered on the wooden fences, and on the cold cruel ground beneath myfeet. I walked on, turning to right and left in utter haphazard, withoutcaring to look up at the names of the streets, and all that I rememberof my walk on that Sunday afternoon seems but the broken fragments of anevil dream. In a confused vision I stumbled on, through roads half townand half country; gray fields melting into the cloudy world of mist onone side of me, and on the other comfortable villas with a glow offirelight flickering on the walls; but all unreal, red brick walls, andlighted windows, vague trees, and glimmering country, gas-lampsbeginning to star the white shadows, the vanishing perspectives of therailway line beneath high embankments, the green and red of the signallamps,--all these were but momentary pictures flashed on my tired brainand senses numbed by hunger. Now and then I would hear a quick stepringing on the iron road, and men would pass me well wrapped up, walkingfast for the sake of warmth, and no doubt eagerly foretasting thepleasures of a glowing hearth, with curtains tightly drawn about thefrosted panes, and the welcomes of their friends; but as the earlyevening darkened and night approached, foot-passengers got fewer andfewer, and I passed through street after street alone. In the whitesilence I stumbled on, as desolate as if I trod the streets of a buriedcity; and as I grew more weak and exhausted, something of the horror ofdeath was folding thickly round my heart. Suddenly, as I turned acorner, some one accosted me courteously beneath the lamp-post, and Iheard a voice asking if I could kindly point the way to Avon Road. Atthe sudden shock of human accents I was prostrated and my strength gaveway, and I fell all huddled on the side-walk and wept and sobbed andlaughed in violent hysteria. I had gone out prepared to die, and as Istepped across the threshold that had sheltered me, I consciously badeadieu to all hopes and all remembrances; the door clanged behind me withthe noise of thunder, and I felt that an iron curtain had fallen on thebrief passages of my life, and that henceforth I was to walk a littleway in a world, of gloom and shadow; I entered on the stage of the firstact of death. Then came my wandering in the mist, the whiteness wrappingall things, the void streets, and muffled silence, till when that voicespoke to me, it was as if I had died and life returned to me. In a fewminutes I was able to compose my feelings, and as I rose I saw that Iwas confronted by a middle-aged gentleman of specious appearance, neatlyand correctly dressed. He looked at me with an expression of great pity,but before I could stammer out my ignorance of the neighborhood, forindeed I had not the slightest notion of where I had wandered, he spoke.

  "My dear madam," he said, "you seem in some terrible distress. Youcannot think how you alarmed me. But may I inquire the nature of yourtrouble? I assure you that you can safely confide in me."

  "You are very kind," I replied; "but, I fear there is nothing to bedone. My condition seems a hopeless one."

  "Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You are too young to talk like that. Come, letus walk down here, and you must tell me your difficulty. Perhaps I maybe able to help you."

  There was something very soothing and persuasive in his manner, and aswe walked together, I gave him an outline of my story, and told of thedespair that had oppressed me almost to death.

  "You were wrong to give in so completely," he said, when I was silent."A month is too short a time in which to feel one's way in London.London, let me tell you, Miss Lally, does not lie open and undefended;it is a fortified place, fossed and double-moated with curiousintricacies. As must always happen in large towns, the conditions oflife have become hugely artificial; no mere simple palisade is run up tooppose the man or woman who would take the place by storm, but serriedlines of subtle contrivances, mines, and pitfalls which it needs astrange skill to overcome. You, in your simplicity, fancied you had onlyto shout for these walls to sink into nothingness, but the time is gonefor such startling victories as these. Take courage; you will learn thesecret of success before very long."

  "Alas, sir," I replied, "I have no doubt your conclusions are correct,but at the present moment I seem to be in a fair way to die ofstarvation. You spoke of a secret; for heaven's sake, tell it me, if youhave any pity for my distress."

  He laughed genially. "There lies the strangeness of it all. Those whoknow the secret cannot tell it if they would; it is positively asineffable as the central doctrine of Freemasonry. But I may say this,that you yourself have penetrated at least the outer husk of themystery," and he laughed again.

  "Pray do not jest with me," I said. "What have I done, _que sais-je_? Iam so far ignorant that I have not the slightest idea of how my nextmeal is to be provided."

  "Excuse me. You ask what you have done? You have met me. Come, we willfence no longer. I see you have self-education, the only educationwhich is not infinitely pernicious, and I am in want of a governess formy two children. I have been a widower for some years; my name is Gregg.I offer you the post I have named, and shall we say a salary of ahundred a year?"

  I could only stutter out my thanks, and slipping a card with his addressand a bank-note by way of earnest into my hand, Mr. Gregg bade megood-bye, asking me to call in a day or two.

  Such was my introduction to Professor Gregg, and can you wonder that theremembrance of despair and the cold blast that had blown from the gatesof death upon me, made me regard him as a second father? Before theclose of the week. I was installed in my new duties; the professor hadleased an old brick manor house in a western suburb of London, and here,surrounded by plea
sant lawns and orchards, and soothed with the murmurof the ancient elms that rocked their boughs above the roof, the newchapter of my life began. Knowing as you do the nature of theprofessor's occupations, you will not be surprised to hear that thehouse teemed with books; and cabinets full of strange and even hideousobjects filled every available nook in the vast low rooms. Gregg was aman whose one thought was for knowledge, and I too before long caughtsomething of his enthusiasm, and strove to enter into his passion forresearch. In a few months I was perhaps more his secretary than thegoverness of the two children, and many a night I have sat at the deskin the glow of the shaded lamp while he, pacing up and down in the rich,gloom of the firelight, dictated to me the substance of his "Text-bookof Ethnology." But amidst these more sober and accurate studies I alwaysdetected a something hidden, a longing and desire for some object towhich he did not allude, and now and then he would break short in whathe was saying and lapse into revery, entranced, as it seemed to me, bysome distant prospect of adventurous discovery. The text-book was atlast finished, and we began to receive proofs from the printers, whichwere intrusted to me for a first reading, and then underwent the finalrevision of the professor. All the while his weariness of the actualbusiness he was engaged on increased, and it was with the joyous laughof a schoolboy when term is over that he one day handed me a copy of thebook. "There," he said, "I have kept my word; I promised to write it,and it is done with. Now I shall be free to live for stranger things; Iconfess it, Miss Lally, I covet the renown of Columbus. You will, Ihope, see me play the part of an explorer."

  "Surely," I said, "there is little left to explore. You have been born afew hundred years too late for that."

  "I think you are wrong," he replied; "there are still, depend upon it,quaint undiscovered countries and continents of strange extent. Ah, MissLally, believe me, we stand amidst sacraments and mysteries full of awe,and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Life, believe me, is nosimple thing, no mass of gray matter and congeries of veins and musclesto be laid naked by the surgeon's knife; man is the secret which I amabout to explore, and before I can discover him I must cross overweltering seas indeed, and oceans and the mists of many thousand years.You know the myth of the lost Atlantis; what if it be true, and I amdestined to be called the discoverer of that wonderful land?"

  I could see excitement boiling beneath his words, and in his face wasthe heat of the hunter; before me stood a man who believed himselfsummoned to tourney with the unknown. A pang of joy possessed me when Ireflected that I was to be in a way associated with him in theadventure, and I too burned with the lust of the chase, not pausing toconsider that I knew not what we were to unshadow.

  The next morning Professor Gregg took me into his inner study, whereranged against the wall stood a nest of pigeon-holes, every drawerneatly labelled, and the results of years of toil classified in a fewfeet of space.

  "Here," he said, "is my life; here are all the facts which I havegathered together with so much pains, and yet it is all nothing. No,nothing to what I am about to attempt. Look at this;" and he took me toan old bureau, a piece fantastic and faded, which stood in a corner ofthe room. He unlocked the front and opened one of the drawers.

  "A few scraps of paper," he went on, pointing to the drawer, "and a lumpof black stone, rudely annotated with queer marks and scratches,--thatis all that drawer holds. Here you see is an old envelope with the darkred stamp of twenty years ago, but I have pencilled a few lines at theback; here is a sheet of manuscript, and here some cuttings fromobscure local journals. And if you ask me the subject matter of thecollection, it will not seem extraordinary. A servant girl at afarmhouse, who disappeared from her place and has never been heard of, achild supposed to have slipped down some old working on the mountains,some queer scribbling on a limestone rock, a man murdered with a blowfrom a strange weapon; such is the scent I have to go upon. Yes, as yousay, there is a ready explanation for all this; the girl may have runaway to London, or Liverpool, or New York; the child may be at thebottom of the disused shaft; and the letters on the rock may be the idlewhims of some vagrant. Yes, yes, I admit all that; but I know I hold thetrue key. Look!" and he held me out a slip of yellow paper.

  "Characters found inscribed on a limestone rock on the Gray Hills," Iread, and then there was a word erased, presumably the name of a county,and a date some fifteen years back. Beneath was traced a number ofuncouth characters, shaped somewhat like wedges or daggers, as strangeand outlandish as the Hebrew alphabet.

  "Now the seal," said Professor Gregg, and he handed me the black stone,a thing about two inches long, and something like an old-fashionedtobacco stopper, much enlarged.

  I held it up to the light, and saw to my surprise the characters on thepaper repeated on the seal.

  "Yes," said the professor, "they are the same. And the marks on thelimestone rock were made fifteen years ago, with some red substance. Andthe characters on the seal are four thousand years old at least. Perhapsmuch more."

  "Is it a hoax?" I said.

  "No, I anticipated that. I was not to be led to give my life to apractical joke. I have tested the matter very carefully. Only one personbesides myself knows of the mere existence of that black seal. Besides,there are other reasons which I cannot enter into now."

  "But what does it all mean?" I said. "I cannot understand to whatconclusion all this leads."

  "My dear Miss Lally, that is a question I would rather leave unansweredfor some little time. Perhaps I shall never be able to say what secretsare held here in solution; a few vague hints, the outlines of villagetragedies, a few marks done with red earth upon a rock, and an ancientseal. A queer set of data to go upon? Half-a-dozen pieces of evidence,and twenty years before even so much could be got together; and whoknows what mirage or terra incognita may be beyond all this? I lookacross deep waters, Miss Lally, and the land beyond may be but a hazeafter all. But still I believe it is not so, and a few months will showwhether I am right or wrong."

  He left me, and alone I endeavored to fathom the mystery, wondering towhat goal such eccentric odds and ends of evidence could lead. I myselfam not wholly devoid of imagination, and I had reason to respect theprofessor's solidity of intellect; yet I saw in the contents of thedrawer but the materials of fantasy, and vainly tried to conceive whattheory could be founded on the fragments that had been placed before me.Indeed, I could discover in what I had heard and seen but the firstchapter of an extravagant romance; and yet deep in my heart I burnedwith curiosity, and day after day I looked eagerly in Professor Gregg'sface for some hint of what was to happen.

  It was one evening after dinner that the word came.

  "I hope you can make your preparations without much trouble," he saidsuddenly to me. "We shall be leaving here in a week's time."

  "Really!" I said in astonishment. "Where are we going?"

  "I have taken a country house in the west of England, not far fromCaermaen, a quiet little town, once a city, and the headquarters of aRoman legion. It is very dull there, but the country is pretty, and theair is wholesome."

  I detected a glint in his eyes, and guessed that this sudden move hadsome relation to our conversation of a few days before.

  "I shall just take a few books with me," said Professor Gregg, "that isall. Everything else will remain here for our return. I have got aholiday," he went on, smiling at me, "and I shan't be sorry to be quitfor a time of my old bones and stones and rubbish. Do you know," he wenton, "I have been grinding away at facts for thirty years; it is time forfancies."

  The days passed quickly; I could see that the professor was allquivering with suppressed excitement, and I could scarce credit theeager appetence of his glance as we left the old manor house behind us,and began our journey. We set out at mid-day, and it was in the dusk ofthe evening that we arrived at a little country station. I was tired,and excited, and the drive through, the lanes seems all a dream. Firstthe deserted streets of a forgotten village, while I heard ProfessorGregg's voice talking of the Augustan Legion and th
e clash of arms, andall the tremendous pomp that followed the eagles; then the broad riverswimming to full tide with the last afterglow glimmering duskily in theyellow water, the wide meadows, and the cornfields whitening, and thedeep lane winding on the slope between the hills and the water. At lastwe began to ascend, and the air grew rarer; I looked down and saw thepure white mist tracking the outline of the river like a shroud, and avague and shadowy country, imaginations and fantasy of swelling hillsand hanging woods, and half-shaped outlines of hills beyond, stand inthe distance the glare of the furnace fire on the mountain, growing byturns a pillar of shining flame, and fading to a dull point of red. Wewere slowly mounting a carriage drive, and then there came to me thecool breath and the scent of the great wood that was above us; I seemedto wander in its deepest depths, and there was the sound of tricklingwater, the scent of the green leaves, and the breath of the summernight. The carriage stopped at last, and I could scarcely distinguishthe form of the house as I waited a moment at the pillared porch; andthe rest of the evening seemed a dream of strange things bounded by thegreat silence of the wood and the valley and the river.

  The next morning when I awoke and looked out of the bow window of thebig old-fashioned bedroom, I saw under a gray sky a country that wasstill all mystery. The long, lovely valley, with the river winding inand out below, crossed, in mid vision by a mediaeval bridge of vaultedand buttressed stone, the clear presence of the rising ground beyond,and the woods that I had only seen in shadow the night before, seemedtinged with enchantment, and the soft breath, of air that sighed in atthe opened pane was like no other wind. I looked across the valley, andbeyond, hill followed on hill as wave on wave, and here a faint bluepillar of smoke rose still in the morning air from the chimney of anancient gray farmhouse, there was a rugged height crowned with darkfirs, and in the distance I saw the white streak of a road that climbedand vanished into some unimagined country. But the boundary of all was agreat wall of mountain, vast in the west, and ending like a fortresswith a steep ascent and a domed tumulus clear against the sky.

  I saw Professor Gregg walking up and down the terrace path below thewindows, and it was evident that he was revelling in the sense ofliberty, and the thought that he had, for a while, bidden good-bye totask-work. When I joined him there was exultation in his voice as hepointed out the sweep of valley and the river that wound beneath thelovely hills.

  "Yes," he said, "it is a strangely beautiful country; and to me, atleast, it seems full of mystery. You have not forgotten the drawer Ishowed you, Miss Lally? No; and you have guessed that I have come herenot merely for the sake of the children and the fresh air?"

  "I think I have guessed as much as that," I replied; "but you mustremember I do not know the mere nature of your investigations; and asfor the connection between the search and this wonderful valley, it ispast my guessing."

  He smiled queerly at me. "You must not think I am making a mystery forthe sake of mystery," he said. "I do not speak out because, so far,there is nothing to be spoken, nothing definite I mean, nothing that canbe set down in hard black and white, as dull and sure and irreproachableas any blue book. And then I have another reason: many years ago achance paragraph in a newspaper caught my attention, and focussed in aninstant the vagrant thoughts and half-formed fancies of many idle andspeculative hours into a certain hypothesis. I saw at once that I wastreading on a thin crust; my theory was wild and fantastic in theextreme, and I would not for any consideration have written a hint of itfor publication. But I thought that in the company of scientific menlike myself, men who knew the course of discovery, and were aware thatthe gas that blazes and flares in the gin-palace was once a wildhypothesis; I thought that with such men as these I might hazard mydream--let us say Atlantis, or the philosopher's stone, or what youlike--without danger of ridicule. I found I was grossly mistaken; myfriends looked blankly at me and at one another, and I could seesomething of pity, and something also of insolent contempt, in theglances they exchanged. One of them called on me next day, and hintedthat I must be suffering from overwork and brain exhaustion. 'In plainterms,' I said, 'you think I am going mad. I think not;' and I showedhim out with some little appearance of heat. Since that day I vowed thatI would never whisper the nature of my theory to any living soul; to noone but yourself have I ever shown the contents of that drawer. Afterall, I may be following a rainbow; I may have been misled by the play ofcoincidence; but as I stand here in this mystic hush and silence amidstthe woods and wild hills, I am more than ever sure that I am hot on thescent. Come, it is time we went in."

  To me in all this there was something both of wonder and excitement; Iknew how in his ordinary work Professor Gregg moved step by step,testing every inch of the way, and never venturing on assertion withoutproof that was impregnable. Yet I divined more from his glance and thevehemence of his tone than from the spoken word that he had in his everythought the vision of the almost incredible continually with him; and I,who was with some share of imagination no little of a sceptic, offendedat a hint of the marvellous, could not help asking myself whether he wascherishing a monomania, and barring out from this one subject all thescientific method of his other life.

  Yet, with, this image of mystery haunting my thoughts, I surrenderedwholly to the charm of the country. Above the faded house on thehillside began the great forest; a long dark line seen from the opposinghills, stretching above the river for many a mile from north to south,and yielding in the north to even wilder country, barren and savagehills, and ragged common land, a territory all strange and unvisited,and more unknown to Englishmen than the very heart of Africa. The spaceof a couple of steep fields alone separated the house from the wood, andthe children were delighted to follow me up the long alleys ofundergrowth, between smooth pleached walls of shining beech, to thehighest point in the wood, whence one looked on one side across theriver and the rise and fall of the country to the great western mountainwall, and on the other, over the surge and dip of the myriad trees ofthe forest, over level meadows and the shining yellow sea to the faintcoast beyond. I used to sit at this point on the warm sunlit turf whichmarked the track of the Roman Road, while the two children raced abouthunting for the whinberries that grew here and there on the banks. Herebeneath the deep blue sky and the great clouds rolling, like oldengalleons with sails full-bellied, from the sea to the hills, as Ilistened to the whispered charm of the great and ancient wood, I livedsolely for delight, and only remembered strange things when we wouldreturn to the house, and find Professor Gregg either shut up in thelittle room he had made his study, or else pacing the terrace with thelook, patient and enthusiastic, of the determined seeker.

  One morning, some eight or nine days after our arrival, I looked out ofmy window and saw the whole landscape transmuted before me. The cloudshad dipped low and hidden the mountain in the west, and a southern windwas driving the rain in shifting pillars up the valley, and the littlebrooklet that burst the hill below the house now raged, a red torrent,down to the river. We were perforce obliged to keep snug within doors,and when I had attended to my pupils, I sat down in the morning-roomwhere the ruins of a library still encumbered an old-fashioned bookcase.I had inspected the shelves once or twice, but their contents had failedto attract me; volumes of eighteenth century sermons, an old book onfarriery, a collection of "Poems" by "persons of quality," Prideaux's"Connection," and an odd volume of Pope were the boundaries of thelibrary, and there seemed little doubt that everything of interest orvalue had been removed. Now, however, in desperation, I began tore-examine the musty sheepskin and calf bindings, and found, much to mydelight, a fine old quarto printed by the Stephani, containing the threebooks of Pomponius Mela, "De Situ Orbis," and other of the ancientgeographers. I knew enough of Latin to steer my way through an ordinarysentence, and I soon became absorbed in the odd mixture of fact andfancy; light shining on a little of the space of the world, and beyondmist and shadow and awful forms. Glancing over the clear-printed pages,my attention was caught by the heading of a chapter in So
linus, and Iread the words:--

  MIRA DE INTIMIS GENTIBUS LIBYAE, DE LAPIDE HEXECONTALITHO.

  "The wonders of the people that inhabit the inner parts of Libya, and ofthe stone called Sixtystone."

  The odd title attracted me and I read on:--

  "Gens ista avia et secreta habitat, in montibus horrendis foedamysteria celebrat. De hominibus nihil aliud illi praeferunt quamfiguram, ab humano ritu prorsus exulant, oderunt deum lucis. Striduntpotius quam loquuntur; vox absona nec sine horrore auditur. Lapidequodam gloriantur, quem Hexecontalithon vocant, dicunt enim hunc lapidemsexaginta notas ostendere. Cujus lapidis nomen secretum ineffabilecolunt: quod Ixaxar."

  "This folk," I translated to myself, "dwells in remote and secretplaces, and celebrates foul mysteries on savage hills. Nothing have theyin common with men save the face, and the customs of humanity are whollystrange to them; and they hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak;their voices are harsh, and not to be heard without fear. They boast ofa certain stone, which they call Sixtystone; for they say that itdisplays sixty characters. And this stone has a secret unspeakable name;which is Ixaxar."

  I laughed at the queer inconsequence of all this, and thought it fit forSinbad the Sailor or other of the supplementary Nights. When I sawProfessor Gregg in the course of the day, I told him of my find in thebookcase, and the fantastic rubbish I had been reading. To my surprise,he looked up at me with an expression of great interest.

  "That is really very curious," he said. "I have never thought it worthwhile to look into the old geographers, and I daresay I have missed agood deal. Ah, that is the passage, is it. It seems a shame to rob youof your entertainment, but I really think I must carry off the book."

  The next day the professor called to me to come to the study. I foundhim sitting at a table in the full light of the window, scrutinizingsomething very attentively with a magnifying-glass.

  "Ah, Miss Lally," he began, "I want to use your eyes. This glass ispretty good, but not like my old one that I left in town. Would youmind examining the thing yourself, and telling me how many charactersare cut on it?"

  He handed me the object in his hand, and I saw that it was the blackseal he had shown me in London, and my heart began to beat with thethought that I was presently to know something. I took the seal, andholding it up to the light checked off the grotesque dagger-shapedcharacters one by one.

  "I make sixty-two," I said at last.

  "Sixty-two? Nonsense; it's impossible. Ah, I see what you have done, youhave counted that and that," and he pointed to two marks which I hadcertainly taken as letters with the rest.

  "Yes, yes," Professor Gregg went on; "but those are obvious scratches,done accidentally; I saw that at once. Yes, then that's quite right.Thank you very much, Miss Lally."

  I was going away, rather disappointed at my having been called in merelyto count a number of marks on the black seal, when suddenly thereflashed into my mind what I had read in the morning.

  "But, Professor Gregg, I cried, breathless, the seal, the seal. Why, itis the stone Hexecontalithos that Solinus writes of; it is Ixaxar."

  "Yes," he said, "I suppose it is. Or it maybe a mere coincidence. Itnever does to be too sure, you know, in these matters. Coincidencekilled the professor."

  I went away puzzled by what I had heard, and as much as ever at a lossto find the ruling clew in this maze of strange evidence. For three daysthe bad weather lasted, changing from driving rain to a dense mist, fineand dripping, and we seemed to be shut up in a white cloud that veiledall the world away from us. All the while Professor Gregg was darklingin his room, unwilling, it appeared, to dispense confidences or talk ofany kind, and I heard him walking to and fro with a quick, impatientstep, as if he were in some way wearied of inaction. The fourth morningwas fine, and at breakfast the professor said briskly:--

  "We want some extra help about the house; a boy of fifteen or sixteen,you know. There are a lot of little odd jobs that take up the maids'time, which a boy could do much better."

  "The girls have not complained to me in any way," I replied. "Indeed,Anne said there was much less work than in London, owing to there beingso little dust."

  "Ah, yes, they are very good girls. But I think we shall do much betterwith a boy. In fact, that is what has been bothering me for the last twodays."

  "Bothering you?" I said in astonishment, for as a matter of fact theprofessor never took the slightest interest in the affairs of the house.

  "Yes," he said, "the weather, you know. I really couldn't go out in thatScotch mist; I don't know the country very well, and I should have lostmy way. But I am going to get the boy this morning."

  "But how do you know there is such a boy as you want anywhere about?"

  "Oh, I have no doubt as to that. I may have to walk a mile or two at themost, but I am sure to find just the boy I require."

  I thought the professor was poking, but though his tone was airy enoughthere was something grim and set about his features that puzzled me. Hegot his stick, and stood at the door looking meditatively before him,and as I passed through the hall he called to me.

  "By the way, Miss Lally, there was one thing I wanted to say to you. Idaresay you may have heard that some of these country lads are not overbright; idiotic would be a harsh word to use, and they are usuallycalled 'naturals,' or something of the kind, I hope you won't mind ifthe boy I am after should turn out not too keen-witted; he will beperfectly harmless, of course, and blacking boots doesn't need muchmental effort."

  With that he was gone, striding up the road that led to the wood; and Iremained stupefied, and then for the first time my astonishment wasmingled with a sudden note of terror, arising I knew not whence, and allunexplained even to myself, and yet I felt about my heart for an instantsomething of the chill of death, and that shapeless, formless dread ofthe unknown that is worse than death itself. I tried to find courage inthe sweet air that blew up from the sea, and in the sunlight after rain,but the mystic woods seemed to darken around me; and the vision of theriver coiling between the reeds, and the silver gray of the ancientbridge, fashioned in my mind symbols of vague dread, as the mind of achild fashions terror from things harmless and familiar.

  Two hours later Professor Gregg returned. I met him as he came down theroad, and asked quietly if he had been able to find a boy.

  "Oh, yes," he answered; "I found one easily enough. His name is JervaseCradock, and I expect he will make himself very useful. His father hasbeen dead for many years, and the mother, whom I saw, seemed very gladat the prospect of a few shillings extra coming in on Saturday nights.As I expected, he is not too sharp, has fits at times, the mother said;but as he will not be trusted with the china, that doesn't much matter,does it? And he is not in any way dangerous, you know, merely a littleweak."

  "When is he coming?"

  "To-morrow morning at eight o'clock. Anne will show him what he has todo, and how to do it. At first he will go home every night, but perhapsit may ultimately turn out more convenient for him to sleep here, andonly go home for Sundays."

  I found nothing to say to all this. Professor Gregg spoke in a quiettone of matter-of-fact, as indeed was warranted by the circumstance; andyet I could not quell my sensation of astonishment at the whole affair.I knew that in reality no assistance was wanted in the housework, andthe professor's prediction that the boy he was to engage might prove alittle "simple," followed by so exact a fulfilment, struck me as bizarrein the extreme. The next morning I heard from, the housemaid that theboy Cradock had come at eight, and that she had been trying to make himuseful. "He doesn't seem quite all there, I don't think, miss," was hercomment; and later in the day I saw him helping the old man who workedin the garden. He was a youth of about fourteen, with black hair andblack eyes, and an olive skin, and I saw at once from the curiousvacancy of his expression that he was mentally weak. He touched hisforehead awkwardly as I went by, and I heard him answering the gardenerin a queer, harsh voice that caught my attention; it gave me theimpression of some o
ne speaking deep below under the earth, and therewas a strange sibilance, like the hissing of the phonograph as thepointer travels over the cylinder. I heard that he seemed anxious to dowhat he could, and was quite docile and obedient, and Morgan thegardener, who knew his mother, assured me he was perfectly harmless."He's always been a bit queer," he said, "and no wonder, after what hismother went through before he was born. I did know his father, ThomasCradock, well, and a very fine workman he was too, indeed. He gotsomething wrong with his lungs owing to working in the wet woods, andnever got over it, and went off quite sudden like. And they do say ashow Mrs. Cradock was quite off her head; anyhow, she was found by Mr.Hillyer, Ty Coch, all crouched up on the Gray Hills, over there, cryingand weeping like a lost soul. And Jervase he was born about eight monthsafterwards, and as I was saying, he was a bit queer always; and they dosay when he could scarcely walk he would frighten the other childreninto fits with the noises he would make."

  A word in the story had stirred up some remembrance within me, andvaguely curious, I asked the old man where the Gray Hills were.

  "Up there," he said, with the same gesture he had used before; "you gopast the Fox and Hounds, and through the forest, by the old ruins. It'sa good five mile from here, and a strange sort of a place. The poorestsoil between this and Monmouth, they do say, though it's good feed forsheep. Yes, it was a sad thing for poor Mrs. Cradock."

  The old man turned to his work, and I strolled on down the path betweenthe espaliers, gnarled and gouty with age, thinking of the story I hadheard, and groping for the point in it that had some key to my memory.In an instant it came before me; I had seen the phrase "Gray Hills" onthe slip of yellowed paper that Professor Gregg had taken from thedrawer in his cabinet. Again I was seized with pangs of mingledcuriosity and fear; I remembered the strange characters copied from thelimestone rock, and then again their identity with the inscription onthe age-old seal, and the fantastic fables of the Latin geographer. Isaw beyond doubt that, unless coincidence had set all the scene anddisposed all these bizarre events with curious art, I was to be aspectator of things far removed from the usual and customary traffic andjostle of life. Professor Gregg I noted day by day. He was hot on histrail, growing lean with eagerness; and in the evenings, when the sunwas swimming on the verge of the mountain, he would pace the terrace toand fro with his eyes on the ground, while the mist grew white in thevalley, and the stillness of the evening brought far voices near, andthe blue smoke rose a straight column from the diamond-shaped chimney ofthe gray farmhouse, just as I had seen it on the first morning. I havetold you I was of sceptical habit; but though I understood little ornothing, I began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the iterateddogmas of science that all life is material, and that in the system ofthings there is no undiscovered land even beyond the remotest stars,where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet there struck in on thisthe thought that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, thatscience itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more thana glimpse of the wonders of the inner place.

  There is one day that stands up from amidst the others as a grim redbeacon, betokening evil to come. I was sitting on a bench in the garden,watching the boy Cradock weeding, when I was suddenly alarmed by a harshand choking sound, like the cry of a wild beast in anguish, and I wasunspeakably shocked to see the unfortunate lad standing in full viewbefore me, his whole body quivering and shaking at short intervals asthough shocks of electricity were passing through him, and his teethgrinding, and foam gathering on his lips, and his face all swollen andblackened to a hideous mask of humanity. I shrieked with terror, andProfessor Gregg came running; and as I pointed to Cradock, the boy withone convulsive shudder fell face forward, and lay on the wet earth, hisbody writhing like a wounded blind-worm, and an inconceivable babble ofsounds bursting and rattling and hissing from his lips; he seemed topour forth an infamous jargon, with words, or what seemed words, thatmight have belonged to a tongue dead since untold ages, and buried deepbeneath Nilotic mud, or in the inmost recesses of the Mexican forest.For a moment the thought passed through my mind, as my ears were stillrevolted with that infernal clamor, "Surely this is the very speech ofhell," and then I cried out again and again, and ran away shuddering tomy inmost soul. I had seen Professor Gregg's face as he stooped over thewretched boy and raised him, and I was appalled by the glow ofexultation that shone on every lineament and feature. As I sat in myroom with drawn blinds, and my eyes hidden in my hands, I heard heavysteps beneath, and I was told afterwards that Professor Gregg hadcarried Cradock to his study, and had locked the door. I heard voicesmurmur indistinctly, and I trembled to think of what might be passingwithin a few feet of where I sat; I longed to escape to the woods andsunshine, and yet I dreaded the sights that might confront me on theway. And at last, as I held the handle of the door nervously, I heardProfessor Gregg's voice calling to me with a cheerful ring: "It's allright now, Miss Lally," he said. "The poor fellow has got over it, and Ihave been arranging for him to sleep here after to-morrow. Perhaps I maybe able to do something for him."

  "Yes," he said later, "it was a very painful sight, and I don't wonderyou were alarmed. We may hope that good food will build him up a little,but I am afraid he will never be really cured;" and he affected thedismal and conventional air with which one speaks of hopeless illness,and yet beneath it I detected the delight that leapt up rampant withinhim, and fought and struggled to find utterance. It was as if oneglanced down on the even surface of the sea, clear and immobile, and sawbeneath raging depths, and a storm of contending billows. It was indeedto me a torturing and offensive problem that this man, who had sobounteously rescued me from the sharpness of death, and showed himselfin all the relations of life full of benevolence and pity and kindlyforethought, should so manifestly be for once on the side of the demons,and take a ghastly pleasure in the torments of an afflictedfellow-creature. Apart, I struggled with the horned difficulty, andstrove to find the solution, but without the hint of a clue; beset bymystery and contradiction, I saw nothing that might help me, and beganto wonder whether, after all, I had not escaped from the white mist ofthe suburb at too dear a rate. I hinted something of my thought to theprofessor; I said enough to let him know that I was in the most acuteperplexity, but the moment after regretted what I had done, when I sawhis face contort with a spasm of pain.

  "My dear Miss Lally," he said, "you surely do not wish to leave us? No,no, you would not do it. You do not know how I rely on you; howconfidently I go forward, assured that you are here to watch over mychildren. You, Miss Lally, are my rear-guard; for, let me tell you, thatthe business in which I am engaged is not wholly devoid of peril. Youhave not forgotten what I said the first morning here; my lips are shutby an old and firm resolve, till they can open to utter no ingenioushypothesis or vague surmise but irrefragable fact, as certain as ademonstration in mathematics. Think over it, Miss Lally, not for amoment would I endeavor to keep you here against your own instincts, andyet I tell you frankly that I am persuaded that it is here, here amidstthe woods, that your duty lies."

  I was touched by the eloquence of his tone, and by the remembrance thatthe man, after all, had been my salvation, and I gave him my hand on apromise to serve him loyally and without question. A few days later therector of our church, a little church, gray and severe and quaint, thathovered on the very banks of the river and watched the tides swim andreturn, came to see us, and Professor Gregg easily persuaded him to stayand share our dinner. Mr. Meyrick was a member of an antique family ofsquires, whose old manor house stood amongst the hills some seven milesaway, and thus rooted in the soil, the rector was a living store of allthe old fading customs and lore of the country. His manner, genial witha deal of retired oddity, won on Professor Gregg; and towards thecheese, when a curious Burgundy had begun its incantations, the two menglowed like the wine, and talked of philology with the enthusiasm of aburgess over the peerage. The parson was expounding the pronunciation ofthe Welsh _ll_, and producing sounds like the gurgle of his nativ
ebrooks, when Professor Gregg struck in.

  "By the way," he said, "that was a very odd word I met with the otherday. You know my boy, poor Jervase Cradock. Well, he has got the badhabit of talking to himself, and the day before yesterday I was walkingin the garden here and heard him; he was evidently quite unconscious ofmy presence. A lot of what he said I couldn't make out, but one word,struck me distinctly. It was such an odd sound; half-sibilant,half-guttural, and as quaint as those double _ll_'s you have beendemonstrating. I do not know whether I can give you an idea of thesound. "Ishakshar" is perhaps as near as I can get; but the _k_ ought tobe a Greek _chi_ or a Spanish _j_. Now what does it mean in Welsh?"

  "In Welsh?" said the parson. "There is no such word in Welsh, nor anyword remotely resembling it. I know the book-Welsh, as they call it, andthe colloquial dialects as well as any man, but there's no word likethat from Anglesea to Usk. Besides, none of the Cradocks speak a word ofWelsh; it's dying out about here."

  "Really. You interest me extremely, Mr. Meyrick. I confess the worddidn't strike me as having the Welsh ring. But I thought it might besome local corruption."

  "No, I never heard such a word, or anything like it. Indeed," he added,smiling whimsically, "if it belongs to any language, I should say itmust be that of the fairies,--the Tylwydd Teg, as we call them."

  The talk went on to the discovery of a Roman villa in the neighborhood;and soon after I left the room, and sat down apart to wonder at thedrawing together of such strange clues of evidence. As the professor hadspoken of the curious word, I had caught the glint of his eye upon me;and though the pronunciation he gave was grotesque in the extreme, Irecognized the name of the stone of sixty characters mentioned bySolinus, the black seal shut up in some secret drawer of the study,stamped forever by a vanished race with signs that no man could read,signs that might, for all I knew, be the veils of awful things done longago, and forgotten before the hills were moulded into form.

  When, the next morning, I came down, I found Professor Gregg pacing theterrace in his eternal walk.

  "Look at that bridge," he said when he saw me, "observe the quaint andGothic design, the angles between the arches, and the silvery gray ofthe stone in the awe of the morning light. I confess it seems to mesymbolic; it should illustrate a mystical allegory of the passage fromone world to another."

  "Professor Gregg," I said quietly, "it is time that I knew something ofwhat has happened, and of what is to happen."

  For the moment he put me off, but I returned again with the samequestion in the evening, and then Professor Gregg flamed withexcitement. "Don't you understand yet?" he cried. "But I have told you agood deal; yes, and shown you a good deal. You have heard pretty nearlyall that I have heard, and seen what I have seen; or at least," and hisvoice chilled as he spoke, "enough to make a good deal clear as noonday.The servants told you, I have no doubt, that the wretched boy Cradockhad another seizure the night before last; he awoke me with cries inthat voice you heard in the garden, and I went to him, and God forbidyou should see what I saw that night. But all this is useless; my timehere is drawing to a close; I must be back in town in three weeks, as Ihave a course of lectures to prepare, and need all my books about me. Ina very few days it will be all over, and I shall no longer hint, and nolonger be liable to ridicule as a madman and a quack. No, I shall speakplainly, and I shall be heard with such emotions as perhaps no other manhas ever drawn from the breasts of his fellows."

  He paused, and seemed to grow radiant with the joy of great andwonderful discovery.

  "But all that is for the future, the near future certainly, but stillthe future," he went on at length. "There is something to be done yet;you will remember my telling you that my researches were not altogetherdevoid of peril? Yes, there is a certain amount of danger to be faced; Idid not know how much when I spoke on the subject before, and to acertain extent I am still in the dark. But it will be a strangeadventure, the last of all, the last demonstration in the chain."

  He was walking up and down the room as he spoke, and I could hear in hisvoice the contending tones of exultation and despondence, or perhaps Ishould say awe, the awe of a man who goes forth on unknown waters, and Ithought of his allusion to Columbus on the night he had laid his bookbefore me. The evening was a little chilly, and a fire of logs had beenlighted in the study where we were, and the remittent flame and the glowon the walls reminded me of the old days. I was sitting silent in anarmchair by the fire, wondering over all I had heard, and still vainlyspeculating as to the secret springs concealed from me under all thephantasmagoria I had witnessed, when I became suddenly aware of asensation that change of some sort had been at work in the room, andthat there was something unfamiliar in its aspect. For some time Ilooked about me, trying in vain to localize the alteration that I knewhad been made; the table by the window, the chairs, the faded setteewere all as I had known them. Suddenly, as a sought-for recollectionflashes into the mind, I knew what was amiss. I was facing theprofessor's desk, which stood on the other side of the fire, and abovethe desk was a grimy looking bust of Pitt, that I had never seen therebefore. And then I remembered the true position of this work of art; inthe furthest corner by the door was an old cupboard, projecting into theroom, and on the top of the cupboard, fifteen feet from the floor, thebust had been, and there no doubt it had delayed, accumulating dirtsince the early years of the century.

  I was utterly amazed, and sat silent still, in a confusion of thought.There was, so far as I knew, no such thing as a step-ladder in thehouse, for I had asked for one to make some alterations in the curtainsof my room; and a tall man standing on a chair would have found itimpossible to take down the bust. It had been placed not on the edge ofthe cupboard, but far back against the wall; and Professor Gregg was, ifanything, under the average height.

  "How on earth did you manage to get down Pitt?" I said at last.

  The professor looked curiously at me, and seemed to hesitate a little.

  "They must have found you a step-ladder, or perhaps the gardener broughtin a short ladder from outside."

  "No, I have had no ladder of any kind. Now, Miss Lally," he went on withan awkward simulation of jest, "there is a little puzzle for you; aproblem in the manner of the inimitable Holmes; there are the facts,plain and patent; summon your acuteness to the solution of the puzzle.For Heaven's sake," he cried with a breaking voice, "say no more aboutit. I tell you, I never touched the thing," and he went out of the roomwith horror manifest on his face, and his hand shook and jarred the doorbehind him.

  I looked round the room in vague surprise, not at all realizing what hadhappened, making vain and idle surmises by way of explanation, andwondering at the stirring of black waters by an idle word, and thetrivial change of an ornament. "This is some petty business, some whimon which I have jarred," I reflected; "the professor is perhapsscrupulous and superstitious over trifles, and my question may haveoutraged unacknowledged fears, as though one killed a spider or spilledthe salt before the very eyes of a practical Scotchwoman." I wasimmersed in these fond suspicions, and began to plume myself a little onmy immunity from such empty fears, when the truth fell heavily as leadupon my heart, and I recognized with cold terror that some awfulinfluence had been at work. The bust was simply inaccessible; without aladder no one could have touched it.

  I went out to the kitchen and spoke as quietly as I could to thehousemaid.

  "Who moved that bust from the top of the cupboard, Anne?" I said to her."Professor Gregg says he has not touched it. Did you find an oldstep-ladder in one of the outhouses?"

  The girl looked at me blankly.

  "I never touched it," she said. "I found it where it is now the othermorning when I dusted the room. I remember now, it, was Wednesdaymorning, because it was the morning after Cradock was taken bad in thenight. My room is next to his, you know, miss," the girl went onpiteously; "and it was awful to hear how he cried and called out namesthat I couldn't understand. It made me feel all afraid, and then mastercame, and I heard him speak, and he t
ook down Cradock to the study andgave him something."

  "And you found that bust moved the next morning?"

  "Yes, miss, there was a queer sort of a smell in the study when I camedown and opened the windows; a bad smell it was, and I wondered what itcould be. Do you know, miss, I went a long time ago to the Zoo in Londonwith my cousin Thomas Barker, one afternoon that I had off, when I wasat Mrs. Prince's in Stanhope Gate, and we went into the snake-house tosee the snakes, and it was just the same sort of a smell, very sick itmade me feel, I remember, and I got Barker to take me out. And it wasjust the same kind of a smell in the study, as I was saying, and I waswondering what it could be from, when I see that bust with Pitt cut init standing on the master's desk, and I thought to myself, now who hasdone that, and how have they done it? And when I came to dust thethings, I looked at the bust, and I saw a great mark on it where thedust was gone, for I don't think it can have been touched with a dusterfor years and years, and it wasn't like finger-marks, but a large patchlike, broad and spread out. So I passed my hand over it, withoutthinking what I was doing, and where that patch was it was all stickyand slimy, as if a snail had crawled over it. Very strange, isn't it,miss? and I wonder who can have done it, and how that mess was made."

  The well-meant gabble of the servant touched me to the quick. I lay downupon my bed, and bit my lip that I should not cry out loud in the sharpanguish of my terror and bewilderment. Indeed, I was almost mad withdread; I believe that if it had been daylight I should have fled hotfoot, forgetting all courage and all the debt of gratitude that was dueto Professor Gregg, not caring whether my fate were that I must starveslowly so long as I might escape from the net of blind and panic fearthat every day seemed to draw a little closer round me. If I knew, Ithought, if I knew what there were to dread, I could guard against it;but here, in this lonely house, shut in on all sides by the olden woodsand the vaulted hills, terror seems to spring inconsequent from everycovert, and the flesh is aghast at the half-heard murmurs of horriblethings. All in vain I strove to summon scepticism to my aid, andendeavored by cool common-sense to buttress my belief in a world ofnatural order, for the air that blew in at the open window was a mysticbreath, and in the darkness I felt the silence go heavy and sorrowfulas a mass of requiem, and I conjured images of strange shapes gatheringfast amidst the reeds, beside the wash of the river.

  In the morning, from the moment that I set foot in the breakfast-room Ifelt that the unknown plot was drawing to a crisis; the professor's facewas firm and set, and he seemed hardly to hear our voices when we spoke.

  "I am going out for rather a long walk," he said, when the meal wasover. "You mustn't be expecting me, now, or thinking anything hashappened if I don't turn up to dinner. I have been getting stupidlately, and I dare say a miniature walking tour will do me good. PerhapsI may even spend the night in some little inn, if I find any place thatlooks clean and comfortable."

  I heard this, and knew by my experience of Professor Gregg's manner thatit was no ordinary business or pleasure that impelled him. I knew not,nor even remotely guessed, where he was bound, nor had I the vaguestnotion of his errand, but all the fear of the night before returned; andas he stood, smiling, on the terrace, ready to set out, I implored himto stay, and to forget all his dreams of the undiscovered continent.

  "No, no, Miss Lally," he replied, still smiling, "it's too late now._Vestigia nulla retrorsum_, you know, is the device of all trueexplorers, though I hope it won't be literally true in my ease. But,indeed, you are wrong to alarm yourself so; I look upon my littleexpedition as quite commonplace; no more exciting than a day with thegeological hammers. There is a risk, of course, but so there is on thecommonest excursion. I can afford to be jaunty; I am doing nothing sohazardous as 'Arry does a hundred times over in the course of every BankHoliday. Well, then, you must look more cheerfully; and so good-by tillto-morrow at latest."

  He walked briskly up the road, and I saw him open the gate that marksthe entrance of the wood, and then he vanished in the gloom of thetrees.

  All the day passed heavily with a strange darkness in the air, and againI felt as if imprisoned amidst the ancient woods, shut in an olden landof mystery and dread, and as if all was long ago and forgotten by theliving outside. I hoped and dreaded, and when the dinner-hour came, Iwaited expecting to hear the professor's step in the hall, and his voiceexulting at I knew not what triumph. I composed my face to welcome himgladly, but the night descended dark, and he did not come.

  In the morning when the maid knocked at my door, I called out to her,and asked if her master had returned; and when she replied that hisbedroom stood open and empty, I felt the cold clasp of despair. Still, Ifancied he might have discovered genial company, and would return forluncheon, or perhaps in the afternoon, and I took the children for awalk in the forest, and tried my best to play and laugh with them, andto shut out the thoughts of mystery and veiled terror. Hour after hour Iwaited, and my thoughts grew darker; again the night came and found mewatching, and at last, as I was making much ado to finish my dinner, Iheard steps outside and the sound of a man's voice.

  The maid came in and looked oddly at me.

  "Please, miss," she began, "Mr. Morgan the gardener wants to speak toyou for a minute, if you didn't mind."

  "Show him in, please," I answered, and I set my lips tight.

  The old man came slowly into the room, and the servant shut the doorbehind him.

  "Sit down, Mr. Morgan," I said; "what is it that you want to say to me?"

  "Well, miss, Mr. Gregg he gave me something for you yesterday morning,just before he went off; and he told me particular not to hand it upbefore eight o'clock this evening exactly, if so be as he wasn't backagain home before, and if he should come home before I was just toreturn it to him in his own hands. So, you see, as Mr. Gregg isn't hereyet, I suppose I'd better give you the parcel directly."

  He pulled out something from his pocket, and gave it to me, half rising.I took it silently, and seeing that Morgan seemed doubtful as to what hewas to do next, I thanked him and bade him good-night, and he went out.I was left alone in the room with the parcel in my hand,--a paper parcelneatly sealed and directed to me, with the instructions Morgan hadquoted all written in the professor's large loose hand. I broke theseals with a choking at my heart, and found an envelope inside,addressed also, but open, and I took the letter out.

  * * * * *

  "MY DEAR MISS LALLY," it began, "To quote the old logic manual, the caseof your reading this note is a case of my having made a blunder of somesort, and, I am afraid, a blunder that turns these lines into afarewell. It is practically certain that neither you nor anyone elsewill ever see me again. I have made my will with provision for thiseventuality, and I hope you will consent to accept the small remembranceaddressed to you, and my sincere thanks for the way in which you joinedyour fortunes to mine. The fate which has come upon me is desperate andterrible beyond the remotest dreams of man; but this fate you have aright to know--if you please. If you look in the left-hand drawer of mydressing-table, you will find the key of the escritoire, properlylabelled. In the well of the escritoire is a large envelope sealed andaddressed to your name. I advise you to throw it forthwith into thefire; you will sleep better of nights if you do so. But if you must knowthe history of what has happened, it is all written down for you toread."

  * * * * *

  The signature was firmly written below, and again I turned the page andread out the words one by one, aghast and white to the lips, my handscold as ice, and sickness choking me. The dead silence of the room, andthe thought of the dark woods and hills closing me in on every side,oppressed me, helpless and without capacity, and not knowing where toturn for counsel. At last I resolved that though knowledge should hauntmy whole life and all the days to come, I must know the meaning of thestrange terrors that had so long tormented me, rising gray, dim, andawful, like the shadows in the wood at dusk. I carefully carried outProfessor Gregg's dire
ctions, and not without reluctance broke the sealof the envelope, and spread out his manuscript before me. Thatmanuscript I always carry with me, and I see that I cannot deny yourunspoken request to read it. This, then, was what I read that night,sitting at the desk, with a shaded lamp beside me.

  The young lady who called herself Miss Lally then proceeded to recite:--

  * * * * *

  _The Statement of William Gregg, F.R.S., etc._

  It is many years since the first glimmer of the theory which is nowalmost, if not quite, reduced to fact dawned first on my mind. Asomewhat extensive course of miscellaneous and obsolete reading had donea good deal to prepare the way, and, later, when I became somewhat of aspecialist and immersed myself in the studies known as ethnological, Iwas now and then startled by facts that would not square with orthodoxscientific opinion, and by discoveries that seemed to hint at somethingstill hidden for all our research. More particularly I became convincedthat much of the folk-lore of the world is but an exaggerated account ofevents that really happened, and I was especially drawn to consider thestories of the fairies, the good folk of the Celtic races. Here Ithought I could detect the fringe of embroidery and exaggeration, thefantastic guise, the little people dressed in green and gold sporting inthe flowers, and I thought I saw a distinct analogy between the namegiven to this race (supposed to be imaginary) and the description oftheir appearance and manners. Just as our remote ancestors called thedreaded beings "fair" and "good" precisely because they dreaded them, sothey had dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the truth to be thevery reverse. Literature, too, had gone early to work, and had lent apowerful hand in the transformation, so that the playful elves ofShakespeare are already far removed from the true original, and the realhorror is disguised in a form of prankish mischief. But in the oldertales, the stories that used to make men cross themselves as they satround the burning logs, we tread a different stage; I saw a widelyopposed spirit in certain histories of children and of men and women whovanished strangely from the earth. They would be seen by a peasant inthe fields walking towards some green and rounded hillock, and seen nomore on earth; and there are stories of mothers who have left a childquietly sleeping with the cottage door rudely barred with a piece ofwood, and have returned, not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon,but a thin and wizened creature, with sallow skin and black piercingeyes, the child of another race. Then, again, there were myths darkerstill; the dread of witch and wizard, the lurid evil of the Sabbath, andthe hint of demons who mingled with the daughters of men. And just as wehave turned the terrible "fair folk" into a company of benignant, iffreakish, elves, so we have hidden from us the black foulness of thewitch and her companions under a popular _diablerie_ of old women andbroomsticks and a comic cat with tail on end. So the Greeks called thehideous furies benevolent ladies, and thus the northern nations havefollowed their example. I pursued my investigations, stealing odd hoursfrom other and more imperative labors, and I asked myself the question:Supposing these traditions to be true, who were the demons who arereported to have attended the Sabbaths? I need not say that I laid asidewhat I may call the supernatural hypothesis of the middle ages, and cameto the conclusion that fairies and devils were of one and the same raceand origin; invention, no doubt, and the Gothic fancy of old days haddone much in the way of exaggeration and distortion; yet I firmlybelieved that beneath all this imagery there was a black background oftruth. As for some of the alleged wonders, I hesitated. While I shouldbe very loth to receive any one specific instance of modern spiritualismas containing even a grain of the genuine, yet I was not wholly preparedto deny that human flesh may now and then, once perhaps in ten millioncases, be the veil of powers which seem magical to us; powers which, sofar from proceeding from the heights and leading men thither, are inreality survivals from the depths of being. The amoeba and the snailhave powers which we do not possess; and I thought it possible that thetheory of reversion might explain many things which seem whollyinexplicable. Thus stood my position; I saw good reason to believe thatmuch of the tradition, a vast deal of the earliest and uncorruptedtradition of the so-called fairies, represented solid fact, and Ithought that the purely supernatural element in these traditions, was tobe accounted for on the hypothesis that a race which had fallen out ofthe grand march of evolution might have retained, as a survival, certainpowers which would be to us wholly miraculous. Such was my theory as itstood conceived in my mind; and working with, this in view, I seemed togather confirmation from every side, from the spoils of a tumulus or abarrow, from a local paper reporting an antiquarian meeting in thecountry, and from general literature of all kinds. Amongst otherinstances, I remember being struck by the phrase "articulate-speakingmen" in Homer, as if the writer knew or had heard of men whose speechwas so rude that it could hardly be termed articulate; and on myhypothesis of a race who had lagged far behind the rest, I could easilyconceive that such a folk would speak a jargon but little removed fromthe inarticulate noises of brute-beasts.

  Thus I stood, satisfied that my conjecture was at all events not farremoved from fact, when a chance paragraph in a small country print oneday arrested my attention. It was a short account of what was to allappearance the usual sordid tragedy of the village; a young girlunaccountably missing, and evil rumor blatant and busy with herreputation. Yet I could read between the lines that all this scandal waspurely hypothetical, and in all probability invented to account for whatwas in any other manner unaccountable. A flight to London or Liverpool,or an undiscovered body lying with a weight about its neck in the fouldepths of a woodland pool, of perhaps murder,--such were the theories ofthe wretched girl's neighbors. But as I idly scanned the paragraph, aflash of thought passed through me with the violence of an electricshock: What if the obscure and horrible race of the hills stillsurvived, still remained haunting wild places, and barren hills, and nowand then repeating the evil of Gothic legend, unchanged andunchangeable as the Turanian Shelta, or the Basques of Spain. I havesaid that the thought came with violence; and indeed I drew in my breathsharply, and clung with both hands to my elbow-chair, in a strangeconfusion of horror and elation. It was as if one of my _confreres_ ofphysical science, roaming in a quiet English wood, had been suddenlystricken aghast by the presence of the slimy and loathsome terror of theichthyosaurus, the original of the stories of the awful worms killed byvalorous knights, or had seen the sun darkened by the pterodactyl, thedragon of tradition. Yet as a resolute explorer of knowledge, thethought of such a discovery threw me into a passion of joy, and I cutout the slip from the paper, and put it in a drawer in my old bureau,resolved that it should be but the first piece in a collection of thestrangest significance. I sat long that evening dreaming of theconclusions I should establish, nor did cooler reflection at first dashmy confidence. Yet as I began to put the case fairly, I saw that I mightbe building on an unstable foundation; the facts might possibly be inaccordance with local opinion; and I regarded the affair with a mood ofsome reserve. Yet I resolved to remain perched on the look-out, and Ihugged to myself the thought that I alone was watching and wakeful,while the great crowd of thinkers and searchers stood heedless andindifferent, perhaps letting the most prerogative facts pass byunnoticed.

  Several years elapsed before I was enabled to add to the contents of thedrawer; and the second find was in reality not a valuable one, for itwas a mere repetition of the first, with only the variation of anotherand distant locality. Yet I gained something; for in the second case, asin the first, the tragedy took place in a desolate and lonely country,and so far my theory seemed justified. But the third piece was to me farmore decisive. Again, amongst outland hills, far even from a main roadof traffic, an old man was found done to death, and the instrument ofexecution was left beside him. Here, indeed, there was rumor andconjecture, for the deadly tool was a primitive stone axe, bound by gutto the wooden handle, and surmises the most extravagant and improbablewere indulged in. Yet, as I thought with a kind of glee, the wildestconjectures went far
astray; and I took the pains to enter intocorrespondence with the local doctor, who was called at the inquest. He,a man of some acuteness, was dumfoundered. "It will not do to speak ofthese things in country places, he wrote to me; but, frankly, ProfessorGregg, there is some hideous mystery here. I have obtained possession ofthe stone axe, and have been so curious as to test its powers. I took itinto the back-garden of my house one Sunday afternoon when my family andthe servants were all out, and there, sheltered by the poplar hedges, Imade my experiments. I found the thing utterly unmanageable. Whetherthere is some peculiar balance, some nice adjustment of weights, whichrequire incessant practice, or whether an effectual blow can be struckonly by a certain trick of the muscles, I do not know; but I assure youthat I went into the house with but a sorry opinion of my athleticcapacities. It was like an inexperienced man trying 'putting thehammer;' the force exerted seemed to return on oneself, and I foundmyself hurled backwards with violence, while the axe fell harmless tothe ground. On another occasion I tried the experiment with a cleverwoodman of the place; but this man, who had handled his axe for fortyyears, could do nothing with the stone implement, and missed everystroke most ludicrously. In short, if it were not so supremely absurd, Ishould say that for four thousand years no one on earth could havestruck an effective blow with the tool that undoubtedly was used tomurder the old man." This, as may be imagined, was to me rare news; andafterwards, when I heard the whole story, and learned that theunfortunate old man had babbled tales of what might be seen at night ona certain wild hillside, hinting at unheard-of wonders, and that he hadbeen found cold one morning on the very hill in question, my exultationwas extreme, for I felt I was leaving conjecture far behind me. But thenext step was of still greater importance. I had possessed for manyyears an extraordinary stone seal,--a piece of dull black stone, twoinches long from the handle to the stamp, and the stamping end a roughhexagon an inch and a quarter in diameter. Altogether, it presented theappearance of an enlarged tobacco-stopper of an old-fashioned make. Ithad been sent to me by an agent in the East, who informed me that it hadbeen found near the site of the ancient Babylon. But the charactersengraved on the seal were to me an intolerable puzzle. Somewhat of thecuneiform pattern, there were yet striking differences, which Idetected at the first glance, and all efforts to read the inscription onthe hypothesis that the rules for deciphering the arrow-headed writingwould apply proved futile. A riddle such as this stung my pride, and atodd moments I would take the Black Seal out of the cabinet, andscrutinize it with so much idle perseverance that every letter wasfamiliar to my mind, and I could have drawn the inscription from memorywithout the slightest error. Judge then of my surprise, when I one dayreceived from a correspondent in the west of England a letter and anenclosure that positively left me thunderstruck. I saw carefully tracedon a large piece of paper the very characters of the Black Seal, withoutalteration of any kind, and above the inscription my friend had written:_Inscription found on a limestone rock on the Grey Hills, Monmouthshire.Done in some red earth and quite recent_. I turned to the letter. Myfriend wrote: "I send you the enclosed inscription with all due reserve.A shepherd who passed by the stone a week ago swears that there was thenno mark of any kind. The characters, as I have noted, are formed bydrawing some red earth over the stone, and are of an average height ofone inch. They look to me like a kind of cuneiform character, a gooddeal altered, but this of course is impossible. It may be either a hoaxor more probably some scribble of the gypsies, who are plentiful enoughin this wild country. They have, as you are aware, many hieroglyphicswhich they use in communicating with one another. I happened to visitthe stone in question two days ago in connection with a rather painfulincident which has occurred here."

  As may be supposed, I wrote immediately to my friend, thanking him forthe copy of the inscription, and asking him in a casual manner, thehistory of the incident he mentioned. To be brief, I heard that a womannamed Cradock, who had lost her husband a day before, had set out tocommunicate the sad news to a cousin who lived some five miles away. Shetook a short cut which led by the Gray Hills. Mrs. Cradock, who was thenquite a young woman, never arrived at her relative's house. Late thatnight a farmer who had lost a couple of sheep, supposed to have wanderedfrom the flock, was walking over the Gray Hills, with a lantern and hisdog. His attention was attracted by a noise, which he described as akind of wailing, mournful and pitiable to hear; and, guided by thesound, he found the unfortunate Mrs. Cradock crouched on the ground bythe limestone rock, swaying her body to and fro, and lamenting andcrying in so heart-rending a manner that the farmer was, as he says, atfirst obliged to stop his ears, or he would have run away. The womanallowed herself to be taken home, and a neighbor came to see to hernecessities. All the night she never ceased her crying, mixing herlament with words of some unintelligible jargon, and when the doctorarrived he pronounced her insane. She lay on her bed for a week, nowwailing, as people said, like one lost and damned for eternity, and nowsunk in a heavy coma; it was thought that grief at the loss of herhusband had unsettled her mind, and the medical man did not at one timeexpect her to live. I need not say that I was deeply interested in thisstory, and I made my friend write to me at intervals with all theparticulars of the case. I heard then that in the course of six weeksthe woman gradually recovered the use of her faculties and some monthslater she gave birth to a son, christened Jervase, who unhappily provedto be of weak intellect. Such were the facts known to the village; butto me while I whitened at the suggested thought of the hideousenormities that had doubtless been committed, all this was nothing shortof conviction, and I incautiously hazarded a hint of something like thetruth to some scientific friends. The moment the words had left my lipsI bitterly regretted having spoken, and thus given away the great secretof my life, but with a good deal of relief mixed with indignation, Ifound my fears altogether misplaced, for my friends ridiculed me to myface, and I was regarded as a madman; and beneath a natural anger Ichuckled to myself, feeling as secure amidst these blockheads, as if Ihad confided what I knew to the desert sands.

  But now, knowing so much, I resolved I would know all, and Iconcentrated my efforts on the task of deciphering the inscription onthe Black Seal. For many years I made this puzzle the sole object of myleisure moments; for the greater portion of my time was, of course,devoted to other duties, and it was only now and then that I couldsnatch a week of clear research. If I were to tell the full history ofthis curious investigation, this statement would be wearisome in theextreme, for it would contain simply the account of long and tediousfailure. By what I knew already of ancient scripts I was well-equippedfor the chase, as I always termed it to myself. I had correspondentsamongst all the scientific men in Europe, and, indeed, in the world, andI could not believe that in these days any character, however ancientand however perplexed, could long resist the search-light I should bringto bear upon it. Yet, in point of fact, it was fully fourteen yearsbefore I succeeded. With every year my professional duties increased,and my leisure became smaller. This no doubt retarded me a good deal;and yet, when I look back on those years I am astonished at the vastscope of my investigation of the Black Seal. I made my bureau a centre,and from all the world and from all the ages I gathered transcripts ofancient writing. Nothing, I resolved, should pass me unawares, and thefaintest hint should be welcomed and followed up. But as one covertafter another was tried and proved empty of result, I began in thecourse of years to despair, and to wonder whether the Black Seal werethe sole relic of some race that had vanished from the world and left noother trace of its existence,--had perished, in fine, as Atlantis issaid to have done, in some great cataclysm, its secrets perhaps drownedbeneath the ocean or moulded into the heart of the hills. The thoughtchilled my warmth a little, and though I still persevered, it was nolonger with the same certainty of faith. A chance came to the rescue. Iwas staying in a considerable town in the north of England, and took theopportunity of going over the very creditable museum that had for sometime been established in the place. The curator was
one of mycorrespondents; and, as we were looking through one of the mineralcases, my attention was struck by a specimen, a piece of black stonesome four inches square, the appearance of which reminded me in ameasure of the Black Seal. I took it up carelessly, and was turning itover in my hand, when I saw, to my astonishment, that the under side wasinscribed. I said, quietly enough, to my friend the curator that thespecimen interested me, and that I should be much obliged if he wouldallow me to take it with me to my hotel for a couple of days. He, ofcourse, made no objection, and I hurried to my rooms, and found that myfirst glance had not deceived me. There were two inscriptions; one inthe regular cuneiform character, another in the character of the BlackSeal, and I realized that my task was accomplished. I made an exact copyof the two inscriptions; and when I got to my London study, and had theSeal before me, I was able seriously to grapple with the great problem.The interpreting inscription on the museum specimen, though in itselfcurious enough, did not bear on my quest, but the transliteration mademe master of the secret of the Black Seal. Conjecture, of course, had toenter into my calculations; there was here and there uncertainty about aparticular ideograph, and one sign recurring again and again on the Sealbaffled me for many successive nights. But at last the secret stood openbefore me in plain English, and I read the key of the awfultransmutation of the hills. The last word was hardly written, when withfingers all trembling and unsteady I tore the scrap of paper into theminutest fragments, and saw them flame and blacken in the red hollow ofthe fire, and then I crushed the gray films that remained into finestpowder. Never since then have I written those words; never will I writethe phrases which tell me how man can be reduced to the slime from whichhe came, and be forced to put on the flesh of the reptile and the snake.There was now but one thing remaining. I knew; but I desired to see, andI was after some time able to take a house in the neighborhood of theGray Hills, and not far from the cottage where Mrs. Cradock and her sonJervase resided. I need not go into a full and detailed account of theapparently inexplicable events which have occurred here, where I amwriting this. I knew that I should find in Jervase Cradock something ofthe blood of the "Little People," and I found later that he had morethan once encountered his kinsmen in lonely places in that lonely land.When I was summoned one day to the garden, and found him in a seizurespeaking or hissing the ghastly jargon of the Black Seal, I am afraidthat exultation prevailed over pity. I heard bursting from his lips thesecrets of the underworld, and the word of dread, "Ishakshar," thesignification of which I must be excused from giving.

  But there is one incident I cannot pass over unnoticed. In the wastehollow of the night I awoke at the sound of those hissing syllables Iknew so well; and on going to the wretched boy's room, I found himconvulsed and foaming at the mouth, struggling on the bed as if hestrove to escape the grasp of writhing demons. I took him down to myroom and lit the lamp, while he lay twisting on the floor, calling onthe power within his flesh to leave him. I saw his body swell and becomedistended as a bladder, while the face blackened before my eyes; andthen at the crisis I did what was necessary according to the directionson the Seal, and putting all scruple on one side, I became a man ofscience, observant of what was passing. Yet the sight I had to witnesswas horrible, almost beyond the power of human conception and the mostfearful fantasy; something pushed out from the body there on the floor,and stretched forth, a slimy wavering tentacle, across the room, andgrasped the bust upon the cupboard, and laid it down on my desk.

  When it was over, and I was left to walk up and down all the rest of thenight, white and shuddering, with sweat pouring from my flesh, I vainlytried to reason with myself; I said, truly enough, that I had seennothing really supernatural, that a snail pushing out his horns anddrawing them in was but an instance on a smaller scale of what I hadwitnessed; and yet horror broke through all such reasonings and left meshattered and loathing myself for the share I had taken in the night'swork.

  There is little more to be said. I am going now to the final trial andencounter; for I have determined that there shall be nothing wanting,and I shall meet the "Little People" face to face. I shall have theBlack Seal and the knowledge of its secrets to help me, and if Iunhappily do not return from my journey, there is no need to conjure uphere a picture of the awfulness of my fate.

  Pausing a little at the end of Professor Gregg's statement, Miss Lallycontinued her tale in the following words:--

  Such was the almost incredible story that the professor had left behindhim. When I had finished reading it, it was late at night, but the nextmorning I took Morgan with me, and we proceeded to search the Gray Hillsfor some trace of the lost professor. I will not weary you with adescription of the savage desolation of that tract of country, a tractof utterest loneliness, of bare green hills dotted over with graylimestone boulders, worn by the ravage of time into fantastic semblancesof men and beasts. Finally, after many hours of weary searching, wefound what I told you--the watch and chain, the purse, and thering--wrapped in a piece of coarse parchment. When Morgan cut the gutthat bound the parcel together, and I saw the professor's property, Iburst into tears, but the sight of the dreaded characters of the BlackSeal repeated on the parchment froze me to silent horror, and I think Iunderstood for the first time the awful fate that had come upon my lateemployer.

  I have only to add that Professor Gregg's lawyer treated my account ofwhat had happened as a fairy tale, and refused even to glance at thedocuments I laid before him. It was he who was responsible for thestatement that appeared in the public press, to the effect thatProfessor Gregg had been drowned, and that his body must have been sweptinto the open sea.

  Miss Lally stopped speaking and looked at Mr. Phillipps, with a glanceof some enquiry. He, for his part, was sunken in a deep revery ofthought; and when he looked up and saw the bustle of the eveninggathering in the square, men and women hurrying to partake of dinner,and crowds already besetting the music-halls, all the hum and press ofactual life seemed unreal and visionary, a dream in the morning after anawakening.

  "I thank you," he said at last, "for your most interesting story,interesting to me, because I feel fully convinced of its exact truth."

  "Sir," said the lady, with some energy of indignation, "you grieve andoffend me. Do you think I should waste my time and yours by concoctingfictions on a bench in Leicester Square?"

  "Pardon me, Miss Lally, you have a little misunderstood me. Before youbegan I knew that whatever you told would be told in good faith, butyour experiences have a far higher value than that of _bona fides_. Themost extraordinary circumstances in your account are in perfect harmonywith the very latest scientific theories. Professor Lodge would, I amsure, value a communication from you extremely; I was charmed from thefirst by his daring hypothesis in explanation of the wonders ofSpiritualism (so called), but your narrative puts the whole matter outof the range of mere hypothesis."

  "Alas, sir, all this will not help me. You forget, I have lost mybrother under the most startling and dreadful circumstances. Again, Iask you, did you not see him as you came here? His black whiskers, hisspectacles, his timid glance to right and left; think, do not theseparticulars recall his face to your memory?"

  "I am sorry to say I have never seen any one of the kind," saidPhillipps, who had forgotten all about the missing brother. "But let meask you a few questions. Did you notice whether Professor Gregg--"

  "Pardon me, sir, I have stayed too long. My employers will be expectingme. I thank you for your sympathy. Good bye."

  Before Mr. Phillipps had recovered from his amazement at this abruptdeparture, Miss Lally had disappeared from his gaze, passing into thecrowd that now thronged the approaches to the Empire. He walked home ina pensive frame of mind, and drank too much tea. At ten o'clock he hadmade his third brew, and had sketched out the outlines of a little workto be called _Protoplasmic Reversion_.