II

Dreeme heard the solemn-toned clock in the Slater house striking as he

pushed his own unlatched door open and stepped into the narrow hall.

One hollow sound. A single and ineffectual blow at the star-lit night.

It must be eleven-thirty, he thought, for Walden Slater had mumbled

something about ten-thirty when he had paused at the back piazza an

hour before. Time for all good men to go to bed. Time for all good

men to come to the aid of their party. After he pulled the door shut

behind him and shot the bolt and turned around he realized that the

lamp was glowing in his little study. For an instant he stood in stupid

perplexity, wondering how he could have been so excited as to leave the

light aflare and the door ajar when he had hastened forth two hours

ago to the burned mill. Was he actually as absent-minded as that? “I

didn’t leave them so,” he said to himself, shaping the words silently

with his lips, and then walked slowly along the hall to the study.

Through the angle of the partially opened door he could see a patch of

black dress against which a long white hand hung languidly, the fingers

idly curled. He stopped and observed it, not with surprise--indeed,

subconsciously he had expected it--but with a vague distaste that

wrinkled his forehead and tightened his lips. She was sitting in a

listening attitude waiting for him to turn the corner of the door. He

was tempted to turn and walk out hastily, letting her have the house

to herself until the loneliness and weariness of waiting forced her to

return to her own home. He was tired and didn’t want to talk. He had

ridden a wave of excitement all day, a towering tidal wave that had

swept him high and far, and now he was exhausted, let down, filled with

the glow of a faint triumph, to be sure, but pleasantly hollow inside.

He was like a swimmer who had outreached his strength but achieved some

goal in the endeavor. He desired nothing more than to climb into his

bed, stretched out beneath the great square patches of the coverlet,

and sleep dreamlessly, to renew his benumbed faculties for the day

that was to follow. What on earth could she have to say to him now?

Had his attitude not settled everything last night when he had left

her at the mill without turning back? She had called him a miserable

coward. Well, let her think so. Perhaps that was the safest way for

him. All he desired now was to get out of the valley with Deborah. Let

them continue as they willed with their own theories. They were all

mad and perhaps it would be a good thing if they killed each other off

in the process of their lunacies. His curiosity about them was sleepy

now. The unrest that had pervaded him at the thought of the mystery

hovering over Marlborough was slothful. It was more important to go out

into that real world with Deborah and begin to live. Here, he was in

a valley of shadows. He stood, therefore, in the shelter of the door

peering through at the lighted room in sleepy impatience and lethargic

anger. She sat there listening. She knew he was lurking just out of her

sight. He could see her hand crumple up in irritation.

“Will you come in?” she said in a low husky impatient voice.

He crossed the lintel reluctantly and stood facing her. Her eyes

glistened in the saffron glow of the lamp as she observed him coldly.

It was only by the heightened rise and fall of her full breasts

outlined beneath the dark fabric of her dress that he could see how

enraged she was. Vaguely he wondered how long she had been sitting

there and waiting for him.

“Since ten o’clock,” she said as though in answer to his thought. “I

heard you walk about the house an hour ago. I heard you stroll away

with that ... that servant girl. I heard you come back with that ...

that servant girl.”

He decided that Deborah did not need any defence so he complacently

ignored her contemptuous speech.

“Are you as lacking in ambition as you are in courage?” she inquired

maliciously in her peculiar husky voice.

Dreeme nodded. He didn’t care what she thought as long as she left

speedily. She could not rouse him to anger by anything she said. With

an excitable gesture she stood up and paced swiftly about the room,

her long shadow flickering across the atrociously-papered wall. Dreeme

watched her objectively. She was magnificent. There was no doubt of

that. Like a tigress. A great slumberous tigress in whose arteries ran

a secret and smoldering flame. Full breasted, long in the thighs, wide

cheek-bones and great eyes, hair like a blue-black smoke curling over

her white forehead, archaic mouth. He had pictured her in so many ways.

Medusa. Astarte Syriaca. Wife of the Afrit. Tigress. A creature of the

imagination compounded out of dark and passionate urges. Yet his veins

ran slow now at the thought of her. She could not touch his emotions

again as she had that first time in the lamp-lit library when he had

felt her presence like a dim magic in the room. He could look at her

coldly and say, “Please go. I do not want you here. I do not trust

you. You belong in this unreal world and I am not a part of it. There

is the shadow of blood on your mouth.” He even opened his mouth to say

these things and then thought better of it and closed his lips tightly.

She stopped in front of him, her face a few inches from his, and

studied him fiercely. The bitter-sweet aroma of her hair rose about his

nostrils. He thought fixedly of the frail ghost-like figure of Deborah

and observed her coolly.

“You have a new mask,” she said shortly. “Where is my weak doctor now?”

“He never existed except in your imagination,” he replied.

In spite of her anger she smiled.

“Do you think so?” she said.

She continued to study his face. Her large understanding eyes were

disconcerting and he looked away from her finally.

“Did you go to the mill?” she inquired.

“Don’t you know?” he returned.

“So did I,” she added. “But he was there waiting. I knew he was waiting

for you. I told you that Burroughs saw us. I came here, then, and

waited.”

Dreeme moved over to the table and she followed him, seating herself by

the side of it.

“Did he tell you to come here?” he asked. “How could you have passed me

on the road?”

“He did not see me. He does not know I am here,” she said. There was a

flash of anger in her eyes. After a second she added:

“I cut through ... in back of the Slater house. There is a path there.

You must know it.”

He nodded absently. He didn’t care, after all.

“What do you want, anyway?” he demanded. “I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

She looked at him appraisingly.

“I want you to take me away from here,” she answered coolly.

He smiled at that and shook his head.

“Wait!” she said, lifting her hand. “I will be faithful to you. I

will give you more than any woman has given any man. I will give you

strength ... which you lack, and intelligence ... which you lack, and

confidence ... which you lack, and.... Do you want love? I have an

eternity of it stored up inside me.”

She spread her arms and her ripe bosom rose with the gesture.

“I don’t want any of these things,” he said in a low voice.

“That little girl has befuddled you,” she said in an angry voice. “You

are like a somnambulist, a man walking in his sleep and afraid to wake

up. You are dreaming like a schoolboy of a little empty face. I tell

you I will take you up on the mountaintops of the world and show you

all the riches of Time. You can pick what you will and with me beside

you it shall be yours. I will pour strength into you and make you one

of the proudest of men.”

The lamp sputtered fitfully between them and Dreeme sat looking at her

sleepily. She was like a Sibyl now, muttering some incantation. All

that she did was in the vein of play-acting. Even her rolling sentences

seemed out of some old drama. Then, Dreeme thought of Westcott’s brief

delirium and wondered how many of them Martha Westcott had heard to

talk in this vein. Both of them were acting in life. Both of them were

archaic masks.

“I don’t want the riches of Time,” he said wearily. “I’m satisfied as I

am.”

He sat up suddenly.

“No!” he cried. “All I ask is to be let alone.”

“You don’t understand,” she said in a patient voice as though she was

speaking to a child. “You are frightened and you don’t understand. You

are frightened out of your wits at the idea of living life fully. You

want to spend it in little ways beside a little fire with a little

face in front of you. That is not life. That is merely a subterfuge for

living. Life extends beyond the lighted square of the fireplace. The

path leads upward to the high rocky places, to the granite cliffs, to

the place where the free winds blow. There is a continual excitement

there and no peace. The brain is sharpened in that rarefied atmosphere

and the will is hardened. It is there that living is its own reward.”

Still he shook his head.

“I know!” she exclaimed fervently. Then she paused and seemed to cast

about in her mind for some conclusive argument that might move him

from his sleepy lethargy. “Shall I tell you about myself?” she asked

at last. “Last night I tried to tell you what I thought, the sort of

philosophy that I had built up out of the dreariness of my days. Shall

I tell you who I am now?”

He did not answer but sat gazing at her weariedly. She took his silence

for assent.

“My people came from Salem,” she began, “but that was a long time ago.

It was back in the days of Cotton Mather. I was named for my first

ancestor,--Martha Carrier. When I was a young girl I used to lie in

bed and dream about that woman whose name I bear. Once I actually saw

her. I do not think it was a dream. She really came into the room and

stood beside my bed and there was a pale light all about her. She was

a tall dark woman with a secret mouth and she walked like a queen. She

leaned over the bed and said something to me but I forget the words

if, indeed, I ever heard them. When she bent above me I saw a red

stripe about her white neck and knew that she had been hanged. I was

frightened at the sight and hid my face in the pillow but not before

I heard a mingled sound of voices muttering and shouting and caught a

glimpse of shadowy shapes swinging against the moon. I didn’t know,

then, what it was all about but I know now. I was to learn all these

things in the years that followed while I grew up alone in the valley

here. My father died on the day that I was born, Peleg Carrier his

name was, and so, of course, I never saw him. My mother died when I

was three years old. She was a shadow, something that I cannot catch

in my memory, strive as hard as I may. When my father died Jeffrey

Westcott appeared in the valley and took charge of everything. He had

been a friend to my father in those days when he had been a student

in Germany. I was brought up by Jeffrey Westcott. We lived out on the

Leeminster Road in an old house very near where the farm is now.”

Her eyes softened and she appeared to be turning back in memory to

that house. Dreeme, whose faculties had quickened as her husky voice

proceeded with her tale, had automatically drawn his pipe out and was

filling it. She said:

“I carry that house about inside me. It was an old rambling structure.

It must have been centuries old. My forefathers had lived in it since

the first one came into the valley and raised it. It was a house

that was full of the Past, full of the essence of times gone. When

I wandered through the many rooms and the floors creaked beneath my

feet and the shadows leaped out of the yawning closets and the huge

stone fireplace. I seemed to be constantly accompanied by shapes in

steeple-crowned hats and muffling cloaks. These shapes were always

trying to say something to me, to whisper some secret, to tell me,

perhaps, of a treasure that was hidden somewhere in the musty recesses

of the building. There were so many things in that house, so many

reminders of the past, that it was a haunted house. Jeffrey Westcott

and myself lived there for thirteen years and it was rarely that we saw

anyone. There were not so many people in the valley then and Jeffrey

did all the house-work until I was old enough to take it over. Until I

was thirteen or fourteen years old I was free, free to roam about as I

pleased, and I became a wild creature. I loved to wander in the woods

and along the bank of the Saccarac River and down the muddy roads. I

was never lonely for I seemed to find living spirits in the river, the

trees, the few houses. I could sit and converse with these invisible

beings. Each season brought me something, a deposit of mystical

knowledge. In the winter everything was mantled in white and the trees,

covered with a crystal coating of ice, stood like crazy shapes blown

out of glass. The wind roared down the valley and the branches rattled

and clashed like pendants. The shivering deer trooped along the river

bank and there were bears in those days. The thought came to me that

the heart of nature was a frozen thing and that the natural state of

the earth was cruelty, that only light and heat and fructification

meant anything at all. Then the spring would come and the ice on the

river would crack, split into whirling sheets, and vanish, and the

earth became black again and tiny shoots of pale green would thrust

out on the stark branches. There were early flowers and the pale sun

would give out a thin warmth. Here, I thought, is the vague beginning

of passion, the indomitable urge to live pushing against the ice of

Time, the defiant gesture of the earth against itself. After that the

full-flushed madness of the summer would descend on the valley and

the wide fields would bear their yield and the heat would buzz in

the air. August was a feverish madman running through lush grass and

waving his fiery torch. This season became to me the end and purpose

of being, the complete passion of the sensual earth, the triumphant

vindication of self. The earth became a ruddy murderer standing above

the pale shadow of itself and sucking its warm passion from its own

secret heart. Out of the dead body came forth the living body. And then

came autumn wearing a colored blanket striped with red and yellow and

brown, walking through the flowers like a proud Indian chief in full

head-dress of tufted feathers. In his eyes was a gray sadness and there

was a mist about his mouth. The smoke from his pipe of peace curled

over the valley. He was a tired man stirred by the last embers of

passion. This was to me the period of weariness after the full flame

of passion had died down. It was in this way that I became a mirror to

the seasons, reflecting them in my moods, walking with them all the

way. I dramatized myself. I became the earth alternately dead, fecund,

full-flowering, and weary. You see how imaginative I was, how different

from other children.”

When she paused Dreeme lit his pipe and the sharp flare of his match

danced about the room. Martha Westcott’s cheeks were glowing with

the ardor of her memories. She seemed to take on a girlish aspect

as she spoke of her girlhood and her face reflected the seasons as

she enumerated them. When she spoke of the winter her cheeks were as

white as snow and when she described the summer they were flooded with

rich blood that glowed through her pale skin. She was like some rare

sensitive instrument reacting to the moods that flowed through her.

Dreeme’s antagonism to her began to dissipate and a creeping interest

manifested itself in his attitude, as, puffing upon his pipe, he leaned

forward and listened to her recital. If she noticed this weakening

on his part she gave no sign of it but continued to dwell among her

memories whole-heartedly, snatching out of the past whatever came

within the net of her words.

“Once,” she said, abruptly diverting the thread of her memories,

“I was wandering about in the old house, poking into odd corners,

opening forgotten chests, creeping under the stairs, investigating the

numberless tiny closets that occupied so many curious places in the

walls. It was a summer day and I can recall the buzzing flies that

hovered about me and the sound of Jeffrey Westcott’s footsteps down

stairs as he moved about the kitchen. I was running my hand along

an upstairs fireplace, thrusting my fingers between the bricks when

one of them moved. With an effort I pulled it out and discovered a

hollow into which I could force my whole arm. I fumbled about and

my fingers closed on something that felt soft. Drawing it out I

discovered that I clutched an old book in a soft black leather cover,

apparently a note-book for it was filled with a strange writing in

archaic characters and symbols and a map. I was sitting on the floor

investigating it when Jeffrey Westcott came upstairs. I could hear him

walking behind me and pausing and looking over my shoulder. Suddenly

he cried out, ‘Old Uriah’s black book!’ and snatched it from me. He

retired to his room with it and passed the rest of the evening there.

It was on that day that Jeffrey went mad. Old Uriah was my grandfather,

Uriah Carrier. He....”

“I know,” said Dreeme, removing his pipe from his mouth. He remembered

Humphrey Lathrop’s description of the old sea-captain. A hunter of

whales in the Pacific who had terrorized and robbed the natives of

Tahiti. A blackbirder off the African Gold Coast. A man with the devil

in his tobacco pouch.

“What was in Old Uriah’s black book?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I did not find out till years later,” she replied. “I know but I will

not tell you. It is not part of my story.”

She dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

“Jeffrey Westcott changed from that day,” she said. “His relations to

me changed. He was no longer the kindly guardian but a silent malicious

man eaten up with a mad dream, with an idea, with a monstrous theory.

We met and ate in silence and he would have nothing to say to me. A

year or two after that the old house burned down. It was struck by

lightning one day while Jeffrey was in the fields working and I was

wandering by the river. I saw the smoke and flames rising in the dark

stormy air and then the storm burst. But it was too late. There was

nothing but a black gutted ruin after the rain cleared and the last

ember expired. For a while I thought my past had gone up in fire and

smoke and then I began to realize that houses may burn and people may

die but the past is indestructible. We carry it about inside of us

and nothing can smash it to pieces. Jeffrey was not too demoralized

by the fire. He said, ‘It was time. It is a symbol. It means there is

nothing for me to find here until I have studied there.’ He decided to

go away. I remember the long ride to Boston, the wait for the boat,

and the longer trip to Hambourg. It was in Hambourg that Jeffrey

married me. He said that it made things easier, that it smoothed the

difficulties of traveling. It was in Germany that I grew to maturity,

grew to a lonely maturity while Jeffrey dragged me from town to town

and city to city, wherever there was an old library or an old withered

man full of insane notions. He had been in Germany before, had studied

there as he had studied in other parts of Europe and Asia. He left me

much by myself and I read a great deal, all sorts of quaint old books,

philosophy, poetry, history, and the natural sciences. At first I loved

Germany. The little towns with their quaint houses delighted me and

the homeliness of German life soothed me. As time went on, however,

all this became an old story and a vast weariness descended on me. I

knew that I did not love Jeffrey Westcott and he knew that he did not

love me. I grew in upon myself, became silent and morbid, passed my

days revolving the various thoughts that came to me out of old books. A

reticence fell over me. I could not talk to people. I was eaten up by

a desire to be myself and I knew that I could not be myself as long as

Jeffrey Westcott dominated me. His will grew stronger and stronger as

the days passed and I could feel it concentering on me as the attention

of a doctor fixes itself upon a rabbit he is about to dissect. I found

that I could not fight against his will, that something iron in his

nature forced me to go the way that he wanted me to go. As his will

developed he grew more and more morose, absenting himself from the

society of people. Soon I was entirely cut apart from any common

intercourse. It was then that he returned here, bringing me with him--a

reluctant ghost. He bought the farm on the Leeminster Road and we have

been there ever since.”

Dreeme’s pipe had gone out and he made no attempt to relight it. He

felt a strange pity welling up inside of him for Martha Westcott and

yet a faint voice within the dark convolutions of his brain told him

not to pity too much. His mind, at the same time, was setting scattered

facts together and he began to realize the situation in the valley. He

felt now that there was only one thing left to discover--the placed

called Dagon. After that, everything would be made clear.

“My life here,” she said, “has been a waiting. The seasons have passed

by and I have wandered like a ghost about that lonely house waiting

for somebody to come, waiting for a rescuer. All these years Jeffrey

Westcott has sat immersed in his books or conducting his strange

experiments and his will has made me a part of those experiments. I

will not tell you what they are because I desire to forget them. They

must not be a part of my life in the future.”

She paused again and glanced at him curiously.

“Yes,” she said then, “I will tell you one thing so that you may

understand how he has dominated my mind. I will tell you this because

it concerns you indirectly, because it was the thing that brought you

into my life. One day he came out of his library and said to me, ‘I can

make you shoot me in the leg.’ He sat across from me at the table and

kept repeating it to himself. ‘I can make you shoot me in the leg.’ I

set my will against his and laughed. ‘There will be no pain,’ he said,

half to himself. ‘I shall will that there be no pain.’ He sat across

the table from me. He kept saying that. I thought I should go mad. I

rose up from the table to clear away the dishes and then I found myself

in front of him with the rifle in my hand and smoke curling from the

muzzle. ‘I will not,’ I said. ‘I will not shoot you in the leg but some

day I will shoot you through the brain.’ He laughed at that and said,

‘You have shot me in the leg and there is no pain. Send for the doctor.

Send Miles for the doctor.’ I looked down and there was blood running

along his leg. It was running into his shoe. Then you came.”

Dreeme believed every word she said. He put the cold pipe on the table

and pushed back his chair. Far away he heard a clock strike midnight.

Mrs. Slater’s window must be open, he thought. Perhaps Deborah was

lying awake listening to that chime that marked the end of a day. He

felt restive and stood up from his chair. Martha Westcott felt his

unrest and spoke rapidly.

“Then you came. We looked at one another and I knew that I might

be saved from this living grave by you. You were the first young

man I had seen to talk to since I left Germany. You were not like

these bent-backed farmers who scrape at the soil and bow beneath the

old horror that Jeffrey Westcott conjures up before them. You are

different, a man from the outer world. You knew that I was different,

too, for you trembled all over when I walked to the door with you that

night. I thought of you all the time. I thought so fiercely that my

thoughts brought you back to me the next day and you hid behind the

stone wall and watched me draw water from the well. Something began to

laugh inside me then. That was why I sent Wagner to you. That is why

you met me at the burned mill. That is why I am here now.”

The yellow lamp-flare was burning dimly but Dreeme felt as though the

little study was filled with a strange incandescence, a milky glow that

lighted up both of their faces. He who had been so sure of himself was

frightened again for he felt his pulses quickening in their beat and

that trembling that had assailed him before in her presence was upon

him like a palsy. He should not have listened to her. He should not

have permitted her to creep into his mind, to envelop him with the warm

mantle of her personality. He walked jerkily around the table toward

her and she stood up as he came. Her eyes became luminous pools as he

neared her and she half-raised her hands.

“I won’t have it,” he said in a grating voice. “I won’t have you say

these things to me.”

She dropped her hands but remained standing in front of him, very near,

her eyes studying his face.

“Are you entirely a stranger to passion?” she asked him. “Is there no

pulse of life in you?”

He tried to talk rationally, to shake his anger from him. He said:

“I’ve heard what you have to say about yourself and I’m sorry. You

have been the victim of a hard life and I pity you. But I do not feel

toward you in the way that you seem to imagine. I am not in love with

you and I shall never be in love with you. You surprised me, took me

off my guard, so to speak, when I first saw you that night. I had not

expected to see anyone like you. I was curious. You seemed to represent

something, some part of the secret in this valley, and I thought about

you a great deal. But that is all. If my emotions were stirred ... they

were the ... the....”

He fumbled for adequate words for his thought was slipping from him.

In the first place, he had never actually analyzed his emotions toward

her, never satisfied himself as to the reason why she could at times

make him tremble. It was certainly not because she was beautiful,

although he realized as she stood there in front of him that she was

very beautiful. No, it was not that. It might be ascribed to a certain

magnetism that flowed about her and drew him insensibly toward her. Yet

was not that a part of her beauty? Lost in conjecture he stood before

her and observed her with tired eyes beneath a frowning brow. She had

listened to him quietly, watching him closely all the time, and when he

faltered and became silent, she placed her hand on his arm.

“You are reasoning,” she said. “You are trying to destroy me by

reasoning, but you find that you cannot do it. I am in your mind and I

shall stay there.”

“I shall root you out of my mind quickly enough,” he said brutally.

“Is it that little girl?” she said. “Do you think that I am afraid of

that little girl?”

He shook his head impatiently.

“I will not discuss her with you,” he declared. “You have nothing to do

with her ... or me, either.”

“Good-bye,” she said then, and put both her arms about his neck. He

felt the heat of her long body against him, and instinctively held her

to him.

“Good-bye,” he muttered against her blue-black hair.

His arms tightened about her as he felt her body pulsing against his,

and he shut his eyes tightly. Waves of sunlit heat seemed to roar about

him. She was no more than a creature of flesh and blood, after all, a

warm breathing woman frantic with primitive urges, and unsuccessfully

disguising them in a web of pretentious phrases. The thought of her

lonely life crept into his beguiled consciousness, and a feeling of

tenderness, of pity, swept through his blood. If he could help her,

he would. But there was no way to it. She must go on and fight her

own battle against life, against the close prison of the valley, and

against the madness of Jeffrey Westcott. He was not a part of that

arduous struggle. He was but an onlooker, a non-participant, a traveler

who would shortly go away. And yet ... her body contained a kindling

heat ... the scent of her hair was about his face ... he could hear the

shuddering ecstasy of her breath.

Suddenly she drew away from him and stood in the center of the room,

breathing rapidly. He could see her dilated nostrils and her archaic

lips slightly parted. Her dark hair had fallen about her shoulders.

Her hand was raised to her shoulder. For an instant she poised like a

living statue, and then with a quick gesture, she tore the black dress

from her shoulders, and the snow-white flesh rippled to gold in the

lamp-light.

“Daniel Dreeme,” she gasped in a husky tone. “Daniel ... you ...

you....”

He stood rooted to the spot, staring at her right shoulder, at the

golden-white flesh that shone in the lamp-light and at the blue figure,

no larger than the palm of his hand, that disfigured the glossy

skin. It seemed to leap to his eyes at the instant conclusion of her

abandoned gesture. He could not take his gaze from it, for it seemed to

burn luminously by itself, a tracing of blue fire that writhed before

his strained eyes. It fluctuated, drew near, retired from him, grew

larger, and then diminished in size. He wanted to cry out, “What, in

the name of Christ, is that!” but he could not force a single word

through his lips. She had sensed the direction of his eyes the instant

she had torn the dress from her shoulder, and a horrified hopelessness

had swept across her face. She could see that the brief bond which

had held them together was instantaneously snapped, that the charm

was shattered. He was thinking no longer of her, no longer stirred

to tenderness by her, or to passion by the whiteness of her body.

Slowly she drew together the torn fragments of her dress and covered

herself. Without a single word she walked slowly toward the door. She

stood there with her back to him for a full minute and waited, but

he said nothing. He still stood by the table, his eyes on the spot

from which she had walked. His mind was an amazed welter of thoughts

through which constantly moved the cold dead hand of Wagner, and the

frail ghost-like figure of Deborah. He could piece nothing together,

make sense of nothing, find no rational explanation of anything. The

lamp began to sputter, shooting its thin protesting flame upward in

the chimney as the oil burned out of the wick. In a minute it would go

out and leave them in darkness. Every time the flame shot upward the

shadows lengthened in the room and every time it went down the corners

filled with curling pools of blackness. Dreeme walked slowly toward the

lamp. It needed oil. It should be put out. His mind strove to function

automatically as he stretched his hand out toward the lamp. He heard

Martha Westcott move in the doorway, and he turned toward her. She was

disappearing into the hall, walking slowly. Suddenly his voice came

back to him.

“The goat’s head,” he said. “Where did you get the goat’s head?”

He could hear her feet walking down the hall, and he stood listening

as the front door softly opened and then closed again. Leaning over he

blew the light out and stood in the darkness, frowning.