the dark countenance that had
appeared to him during the night on Putney Hill--"tell me if you
recognise this face?"

Pender looked at the drawing closely, greatly astonished. He shuddered a
little as he looked.

"Undoubtedly," he said, "it is the face I kept trying to draw--dark,
with the great mouth and jaw, and the drooping eye. That is the woman."

Dr. Silence then produced from his pocket-book an old-fashioned woodcut
of the same person which his secretary had unearthed from the records of
the Newgate Calendar. The woodcut and the pencil drawing were two
different aspects of the same dreadful visage. The men compared them for
some moments in silence.

"It makes me thank God for the limitations of our senses," said Pender
quietly, with a sigh; "continuous clairvoyance must be a sore
affliction."

"It is indeed," returned John Silence significantly, "and if all the
people nowadays who claim to be clairvoyant were really so, the
statistics of suicide and lunacy would be considerably higher than they
are. It is little wonder," he added, "that your sense of humour was
clouded, with the mind-forces of that dead monster trying to use your
brain for their dissemination. You have had an interesting adventure,
Mr. Felix Pender, and, let me add, a fortunate escape."

The author was about to renew his thanks when there came a sound of
scratching at the door, and the doctor sprang up quickly.

"It's time for me to go. I left my dog on the step, but I suppose--"

Before he had time to open the door, it had yielded to the pressure
behind it and flew wide open to admit a great yellow-haired collie. The
dog, wagging his tail and contorting his whole body with delight, tore
across the floor and tried to leap up upon his owner's breast. And there
was laughter and happiness in the old eyes; for they were clear again as
the day.

CASE II: ANCIENT SORCERIES

I

There are, it would appear, certain wholly unremarkable persons, with
none of the characteristics that invite adventure, who yet once or twice
in the course of their smooth lives undergo an experience so strange
that the world catches its breath--and looks the other way! And it was
cases of this kind, perhaps, more than any other, that fell into the
wide-spread net of John Silence, the psychic doctor, and, appealing to
his deep humanity, to his patience, and to his great qualities of
spiritual sympathy, led often to the revelation of problems of the
strange