why did he try to cry out? and why was the cry choked in his throat? Had
he, too, seen the mysterious children? But now everything was quiet, and
the door yielded to Stephen's terrified and frantic pushing.

* * * * *

On the table in Mr Abney's study certain papers were found which
explained the situation to Stephen Elliott when he was of an age to
understand them. The most important sentences were as follows:

'It was a belief very strongly and generally held by the ancients--of
whose wisdom in these matters I have had such experience as induces me to
place confidence in their assertions--that by enacting certain processes,
which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very
remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be
attained: that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain
number of his fellow-creatures, an individual may gain a complete
ascendancy over those orders of spiritual beings which control the
elemental forces of our universe.

'It is recorded of Simon Magus that he was able to fly in the air, to
become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the
soul of a boy whom, to use the libellous phrase employed by the author of
the _Clementine Recognitions_, he had "murdered". I find it set down,
moreover, with considerable detail in the writings of Hermes
Trismegistus, that similar happy results may be produced by the
absorption of the hearts of not less than three human beings below the
age of twenty-one years. To the testing of the truth of this receipt I
have devoted the greater part of the last twenty years, selecting as the
_corpora vilia_ of my experiment such persons as could conveniently be
removed without occasioning a sensible gap in society. The first step I
effected by the removal of one Phoebe Stanley, a girl of gipsy
extraction, on March 24, 1792. The second, by the removal of a wandering
Italian lad, named Giovanni Paoli, on the night of March 23, 1805. The
final "victim"--to employ a word repugnant in the highest degree to my
feelings--must be my cousin, Stephen Elliott. His day must be this March
24, 1812.

'The best means of effecting the required absorption is to remove the
heart from the _living_ subject, to reduce it to ashes, and to mingle
them with about a pint of some red wine, preferably port. The remains of
the first two subjects, at least, it will be well to conceal: a disused
b