ch wise men, seeing from afar off, shun like the plague,
as well they may; but into that region I have gone. If you knew, if you
could even dream of what may be done, of what one or two men have done,
in this quiet world of ours, your very soul would shudder and faint
within you. What you have heard from me has been but the merest husk
and outer covering of true science,--that science which means death and
that which is more awful than death to those who gain it. No, Dyson,
when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little
know the awe and the terror that dwell always within them and about
them.'"

There was a sort of fascination about the man that drew me to him, and
I was quite sorry to have to leave London for a month or two; I missed
his odd talk. A few days after I came back to town I thought I would go
and look him up; but when I gave the two rings at the bell that used to
summon him, there was no answer. I rang and rang again, and was just
turning to go away, when the door opened and a dirty woman asked me
what I wanted. From her look I fancy she took me for a plain-clothes
officer after one of her lodgers; but when I inquired if Mr. Black was
in, she gave me a stare of another kind. 'There's no Mr. Black lives
here,' she said. 'He's gone. He's dead this six weeks. I always thought
he was a bit queer in his head, or else had been and got into some
trouble or other. He used to go out every morning from ten till one,
and one Monday morning we heard him come in and go into his room and
shut the door, and a few minutes after, just as we was a-sitting down
to our dinner, there was such a scream that I thought I should have
gone right off. And then we heard a stamping, and down he came raging
and cursing most dreadful, swearing he had been robbed of something
that was worth millions. And then he just dropped down in the passage,
and we thought he was dead. We got him up to his room, and put him on
his bed, and I just sat there and waited, while my 'usband he went for
the doctor. And there was the winder wide open, and a little tin box he
had lying on the floor open and empty; but of course nobody could
possible have got in at the winder, and as for him having anything that
was worth anything, it's nonsense, for he was often weeks and weeks
behind with his rent, and my 'usband he threatened often and often to
turn him into the street, for, as he said, we've got a living to myke
like other people, and