thing across that marred and blasted it.

Into the whirlpool flew forward a particle of material that was a
human being. And the Group-Soul caught and used it.

The actual accomplishment Henriot did not claim to see. He was
a witness, but a witness who could give no evidence. Whether the
woman was pushed of set intention, or whether some detail of
sound and pattern was falsely used to effect the terrible result, he
was helpless to determine. He pretends no itemised account. She
went. In one second, with appalling swiftness, she disappeared,
swallowed out of space and time within that awful maw--one little
corpuscle among a million through which the Life, now stalking the
Desert wastes, moulded itself a troop-like Body. Sand took her.

There followed emptiness--a hush of unutterable silence, stillness,
peace. Movement and sound instantly retired whence they
came. The avenues of Memory closed; the Splendours all went
down into their sandy tombs....

* * * * *

The moon had sunk into the Libyan wilderness; the eastern sky was
red. The dawn drew out that wondrous sweetness of the Desert,
which is as sister to the sweetness that the moonlight brings. The
Desert settled back to sleep, huge, unfathomable, charged to the
brim with life that watches, waits, and yet conceals itself behind
the ruins of apparent desolation. And the Wadi, empty at his feet,
filled slowly with the gentle little winds that bring the sunrise.

Then, across the pale glimmering of sand, Henriot saw a figure
moving. It came quickly towards him, yet unsteadily, and with a
hurry that was ugly. Vance was on the way to fetch him. And the
horror of the man's approach struck him like a hammer in the face.
He closed his eyes, sinking back to hide.

But, before he swooned, there reached him the clatter of the
murderer's tread as he began to climb over the splintered rocks, and
the faint echo of his voice, calling him by name--falsely and in
pretence--for help.

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: In chapter IX of the story Sand, the
word "indescriable" was corrected to "indescribable."]

End of Project Gutenberg's Four Weird Tales, by Algernon Blackwood

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