o beating him off: and, so
holding me, he managed to produce a single key from one of his pockets,
and to slip it with a rusty clang into the lock of the door.

"You dirty, prying civilian!" he panted at me, as he swayed this way and
that with the pull of my body. "You shall have your wish, by G--! You
want to see inside, do you? Look, then!"

He dashed open the door as he spoke, and pulled me violently into
the opening. A great waft of the cold, dank air came at us, and with
it--what?

The warder had jerked his dark lantern from his belt, and now--an arm of
his still clasped about one of mine--snapped the slide open.

"Where is it?" he muttered, directing the disc of light round and about
the floor of the cell. I ceased struggling. Some counter influence was
raising an odd curiosity in me.

"Ah!" he cried, in a stifled voice, "there you are, my friend!"

He was setting the light slowly travelling along the stone flags close by
the wall over against us, and now, so guiding it, looked askance at me
with a small, greedy smile.

"Follow the light, sir," he whispered jeeringly.

I looked, and saw twirling on the floor, in the patch of radiance cast by
the lamp, _a little eddy of dust_, it seemed. This eddy was never still,
but went circling in that stagnant place without apparent cause or
influence; and, as it circled, it moved slowly on by wall and corner, so
that presently in its progress it must reach us where we stood.

Now, draughts will play queer freaks in quiet places, and of this
trifling phenomenon I should have taken little note ordinarily. But, I
must say at once, that as I gazed upon the odd moving thing my heart
seemed to fall in upon itself like a drained artery.

"Johnson!" I cried, "I must get out of this. I don't know what's the
matter, or--Why do you hold me? D--n it! man, let me go; let me go, I
say!"

As I grappled with him he dropped the lantern with a crash and flung his
arms violently about me.

"You don't!" he panted, the muscles of his bent and rigid neck seeming
actually to cut into my shoulder-blade. "You don't, by G--! You came
of your own accord, and now you shall take your bellyful!"

It was a struggle for life or death, or, worse, for life and reason. But
I was young and wiry, and held my own, if I could do little more. Yet
there was something to combat beyond the mere brute strength of the man I
struggled with, for I fought in an atmosphere of horror unexplainable,
and I knew