ll receive."

Before I could utter a word of remonstrance, I felt a shooting pain in
my inside, and a demoniacal laugh seemed to issue from within me. A
moment afterwards the sharp agony had ceased, leaving nothing but a
dull ache behind, and the Stranger began to reappear, saying, as he
gradually increased in size, "There, I have not hurt you much, have I?
If you are not convinced now, I don't know what will convince you.
What say you?"

My resolution was taken. It seemed intolerable that I should endure
existence subject to the arbitrary visitations of a Magician who could
thus play tricks with one's very stomach. If only I could in any way
manage to pin him against the wall till help came!

Once more I dashed my hardest angle against him, at the same time
alarming the whole household by my cries for aid. I believe, at the
moment of my onset, the Stranger had sunk below our Plane, and really
found difficulty in rising. In any case he remained motionless, while
I, hearing, as I thought, the sound of some help approaching, pressed
against him with redoubled vigor, and continued to shout for assistance.

A convulsive shudder ran through the Sphere. "This must not be," I
thought I heard him say: "either he must listen to reason, or I must
have recourse to the last resource of civilization." Then, addressing
me in a louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, "Listen: no stranger must
witness what you have witnessed. Send your Wife back at once, before
she enters the apartment. The Gospel of Three Dimensions must not be
thus frustrated. Not thus must the fruits of one thousand years of
waiting be thrown away. I hear her coming. Back! back! Away from me,
or you must go with me--wither you know not--into the Land of Three
Dimensions!"

"Fool! Madman! Irregular!" I exclaimed; "never will I release thee;
thou shalt pay the penalty of thine impostures."

"Ha! Is it come to this?" thundered the Stranger: "then meet your
fate: out of your Plane you go. Once, twice, thrice! 'Tis done!"

SECTION 18 How I came to Spaceland, and what I saw there

An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness; then a dizzy,
sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line
that was no Line; Space that was not Space: I was myself, and not
myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked loud in agony, "Either
this is madness or it is Hell." "It is neither," calmly replied the
voice of the Sphere, "