he book I had brought down for
him in my bag, ready addressed. There was a curious smile on his face.

"It never occurred to me that you would dare to _walk_--to-night of all
nights," he was saying.

I stared without a word. I was bursting with the desire to tell him
something of what had happened and try to be patient with his
explanations, but when I sought for words and sentences my story seemed
suddenly flat and pointless, and the details of my adventure began to
evaporate and melt away, and seemed hard to remember.

"I had an exciting walk," I stammered, still a little breathless from
running. "The weather was all right when I started from the station."

"The weather is all right still," he said, "though you may have found
some evening mist on the top of the hills. But it's not that I meant."

"What then?"

"I meant," he said, still laughing quizzically, "that you were a very
brave man to walk to-night over the enchanted hills, because this is
May Day eve, and on May Day eve, you know, _They_ have power over the
minds of men, and can put glamour upon the imagination----"

"Who--'_they_?' What do you mean?"

He put my book down on the table beside him and looked quietly for a
moment into my eyes, and as he did so the memory of my adventure began
to revive in detail, and I thought quickly of the shadowy man who had
shown me the way first. What could it have been in the face of the old
folk-lorist that made me think of this man? A dozen things ran like
flashes through my excited mind, and while I attempted to seize them I
heard the old man's voice continue. He seemed to be talking to himself
as much as to me.

"The elemental beings you have always scoffed at, of course; they who
operate ceaselessly behind the screen of appearances, and who fashion
and mould the moods of the mind. And an extremist like you--for
extremes are always dangerously weak--is their legitimate prey."

"Pshaw!" I interrupted him, knowing that my manner betrayed me
hopelessly, and that he had guessed much. "Any man may have subjective
experiences, I suppose----"

Then I broke off suddenly. The change in his face made me start; it had
taken on for the moment so exactly the look of the man on the hillside.
The eyes gazing so steadily into mine had shadows in them, I thought.

"_Glamour!_" he was saying, "all glamour! One of them must have come
very close to you, or perhaps touched you." Then he asked sharply, "Did
you meet anyone? Did