you speak with anyone?"

"I came by Tom Bassett's cottage," I said. "I didn't feel quite sure of
my way and I went in and asked."

"All glamour," he repeated to himself, and then aloud to me, "and as
for Bassett's cottage, it was burnt down three years ago, and nothing
stands there now but broken, roofless walls----"

He stopped because I had seized him by the arm. In the shadows of the
lamp-lit room behind him I thought I caught sight of dim forms moving
past the book-shelves. But when my eye tried to focus them they faded
and slipped away again into ceiling and walls. The details of the
hill-top cottage, however, started into life again at the sight, and I
seized my friend's arm to tell him. But instantly, when I tried, it all
faded away again as though it had been a dream, and I could recall
nothing intelligible to repeat to him.

He looked at me and laughed.

"They always obliterate the memory afterward," he said gently, "so that
little remains beyond a mood, or an emotion, to show how profoundly
deep their touch has been. Though sometimes part of the change remains
and becomes permanent--as I hope in your case it may."

Then, before I had time to answer, to swear, or to remonstrate, he
stepped briskly past me and closed the door into the hall, and then
drew me aside farther into the room. The change that I could not
understand was still working in his face and eyes.

"If you have courage enough left to come with me," he said, speaking
very seriously, "we will go out again and see more. Up till midnight,
you know, there is still the opportunity, and with me perhaps you won't
feel so--so----"

It was impossible somehow to refuse; everything combined to make me go.
We had a little food and then went out into the hall, and he clapped a
wide-awake on his gray hairs. I took a cloak and seized a walking-stick
from the stand. I really hardly knew what I was doing. The new world I
had awakened to seemed still a-quiver about me.

As we passed out on to the gravel drive the light from the hall windows
fell upon his face, and I saw that the change I had been so long
observing was nearing its completeness, for there breathed about him
that keen, wonderful atmosphere of eternal youth I had felt upon the
inmates of the cottage. He seemed to have gone back forty years; a veil
was gathering over his eyes; and I could have sworn that somehow his
stature had increased, and that he moved beside me with a vigour and
power I