dly and outwardly, for
fear, I suppose, that the creature would become conscious of my
presence; but the distress I felt went far deeper than the mere sense of
personal safety, or the fact of watching something so incredibly active
and real. I became keenly aware of the dreadful psychic calamity it
involved. The realisation that Sangree lay confined in that narrow space
with this species of monstrous projection of himself--that he was
wrapped there in the cataleptic sleep, all unconscious that this thing
was masquerading with his own life and energies--added a distressing
touch of horror to the scene. In all the cases of John Silence--and they
were many and often terrible--no other psychic affliction has ever,
before or since, impressed me so convincingly with the pathetic
impermanence of the human personality, with its fluid nature, and with
the alarming possibilities of its transformations.

"Come," he whispered, after we had watched for some minutes the frantic
efforts to escape from the circle of thought and will that held it
prisoner, "come a little farther away while I release it."

We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like a scene in some
impossible play, or in some ghastly and oppressive nightmare from which
I should presently awake to find the blankets all heaped up upon my
chest.

By some method undoubtedly mental, but which, in my confusion and
excitement, I failed to understand, the doctor accomplished his purpose,
and the next minute I heard him say sharply under his breath, "It's out!
Now watch!"

At this very moment a sudden gust from the sea blew aside the mist, so
that a lane opened to the sky, and the moon, ghastly and unnatural as
the effect of stage limelight, dropped down in a momentary gleam upon
the door of Sangree's tent, and I perceived that something had moved
forward from the interior darkness and stood clearly defined upon the
threshold. And, at the same moment, the tent ceased its shuddering and
held still.

There, in the doorway, stood an animal, with neck and muzzle thrust
forward, its head poking into the night, its whole body poised in that
attitude of intense rigidity that precedes the spring into freedom, the
running leap of attack. It seemed to be about the size of a calf, leaner
than a mastiff, yet more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that I saw
the fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its upper lip slowly lifted,
and I saw the whiteness of its teeth.

Surely no hum