losely at the silent figure on
my right.

It was no bare skull at which I gazed, but a bearded, deadly-pale face.
The curved, voluptuous lips were crimson, looking almost rouged, and the
dull eyes stared through me bleakly. Inhuman agony had etched itself in
deep lines on the white face, and gnawing anguish smoldered in the
sunken eyes. I cannot hope to convey the utter strangeness, the
atmosphere of unearthliness that surrounded him, almost as palpable as
the fetid tomb-stench that welled from his dark garments. He waved a
black-swathed arm to the vacant seat at the head of the table, and I sat
down.

This nightmare sense of unreality! I seemed to be in a dream, with a
hidden part of my mind slowly waking from sleep into evil life to take
command of my faculties. The table was set with old-fashioned goblets
and trenchers such as had not been used for hundreds of years. There was
meat on the trenchers, and red liquor in the jeweled goblets. A heady,
overpowering fragrance swam up into my nostrils, mixed with the
grave-smell of my companions and the musty odor of a dank and sunless
place.

Every white face was turned to me, faces that seemed oddly familiar,
although I did not know why. Each face was alike in its blood-red,
sensual lips and its expression of gnawing agony, and burning black eyes
like the abysmal pits of Tartarus stared at me until I felt the short
hairs stir on my neck. But--I was a Kralitz! I stood up and said boldly
in archaic German that somehow came familiarly from my lips, "I am
Franz, twenty-first Baron Kralitz. What do you want with me?"

A murmur of approval went around the long table. There was a stir. From
the foot of the board a huge bearded man arose, a man with a frightful
scar that made the left side of his face a horror of healed white
tissue. Again the odd thrill of familiarity ran through me; I had seen
that face before, and vaguely I remembered looking at it through dim
twilight.

The man spoke in the old guttural German. "We greet you, Franz, Baron
Kralitz. We greet you and pledge you, Franz--and we pledge the House of
Kralitz!"

With that he caught up the goblet before him and held it high. All along
the long table the black-swathed ones arose, and each held high his
jeweled cup, and pledged me. They drank deeply, savoring the liquor, and
I made the bow custom demanded. I said, in words that sprang almost
unbidden from my mouth:

"I greet you, who are the warders of the secre