at he who would evoke the Devil must choose a
solitary and condemned spot. The burn was solitary. The burn was
condemned surely by the despair and by the endless incapacities of the
wretched being who owned it. I had taken off my shoes and placed them
upon a rock. My feet were bare. My head was covered. I now furtively
proceeded to gather together a small heap of sticks and leaves, and to
these I set fire, after several attempts. As the flames at last crept
up, the mist gathered more closely round me and my fire, as if striving
to warm itself at the blaze. The voice of the burn mingled with the
uneasy crackle of the twigs, and a murmur of its words seemed to emanate
also from the flames, two elements uniting to imitate the utterance of
man to my brain, already surely tormented with fever. And now, with my
eyes upon my book, I proceeded to trace with the sharp point of a stick
in some sandy soil between two rocks a rough Goetic Circle of Black
evocations and pacts. From time to time I paused in my work and glanced
uneasily about me, but I saw only the mists and the waters.

At length my task was finished, and the time had arrived for the
supreme effort of my insane and childish folly. Standing at Amasarac in
the Circle, I said aloud the formula of Evocation of the Grand Grimoire,
ending with the words "Jehosua, Evam, Zariat, natmik, Come, come, come."

My voice died away in the twilight, and I stood among the grey rocks
waiting, mad creature that I surely was! But only the rippling voice of
the burn answered my adjuration. Then I repeated the words in a louder
tone, adding menaces and imprecations to my formula. And all the time
the fire I had kindled sprang up into the mist; and the twilight of the
heavy Autumn fell slowly round me. Again I paused, and again my madness
received no satisfaction, no response. But it seemed to me that I heard
the browsing sheep on the summit of the right bank of the gully scatter
as if at the approach of some one. Yet there was no stir of footsteps.
It must have been my fancy, or the animals were merely changing their
feeding ground in a troop, as they sometimes will, for no assignable
cause. And now I made one last effort, urged by the voice of the burn,
which sang so loudly the words which had mingled with my dream of Faust.
I cried aloud the supreme appellation, making an effort that brought out
the sweat on my forehead, and set the pulses leaping in my thin and
shivering body. "_Chavaj