ite aware that to some
the tale will appear absolutely and intolerably impossible. I know
that if any other than I told it to me I should not believe it. Yet
despite these drawbacks the story is in all particulars, essential and
otherwise, absolutely truthful.

The facts are briefly these:

It was not, to begin with, a dark and dismal evening. The snow was not
falling silently, clothing a sad and gloomy world in a mantle of
white, and over the darkling moor a heavy mist was not rising, as is
so frequently the case. There was no soul-stirring moaning of bitter
winds through the leafless boughs; so far as I was aware nothing
soughed within twenty miles of my bailiwick; and my dog, lying before
a blazing log fire in my library, did not give forth an occasional
growl of apprehension, denoting the presence or approach of an uncanny
visitor from other and mysterious realms: and for two good reasons.
The first reason is that it was midsummer when the thing happened, so
that a blazing log fire in my library would have been an extravagance
as well as an anachronism. The second is that I have no dog. In fact
there was nothing unusual, or uncanny in the whole experience. It
happened to be a bright and somewhat too sunny July day, which is not
an unusual happening along the banks of the Hudson. You could see the
heat, and if anything had soughed it could only have been the mercury
in my thermometer. This I must say clicked nervously against the top
of the glass tube and manifested an extraordinary desire to climb
higher than the length of the tube permitted. Incidentally I may add,
even if it be not believed, that the heat was so intense that the
mercury actually did raise the whole thermometer a foot and a half
above the mantel-shelf, and for two mortal hours, from midday until
two by the Monastery Clock, held it suspended there in mid-air with no
visible means of support. Not a breath of air was stirring, and the
only sounds heard were the expanding creaks of the beams of my house,
which upon that particular day increased eight feet in width and
assumed a height which made it appear to be a three instead of a two
story dwelling. There was little work doing in the house. The children
played about in their bathing suits, and the only other active factor
in my life of the moment was our hired man who was kept busy in the
cellar pouring water on the furnace coal to keep it from spontaneously
combusting.

We had just had luncheon,