rted me. I let loose my
heart in a turbulent crowd of words. I explained my impotence of body
and of mind to this grey traveller in the twilight. I dwelt upon my
misery. I repeated the cry of the burn and related my insane dream of
imitating Faust, of making my poor pact with Lucifer, with the Sphinx of
mediaeval terrors. When I ceased, the boy's voice answered:--

"They say that in these modern days Satan has grown exigent. It is not
enough to dedicate to him your own soul; but you must also pay a tribute
of souls to the Caesar of hell."

"A tribute of souls?"

"Yes. You must bring, they say, the mystic number, three souls to
Satan."

Suddenly I laughed.

"I could never do that," I said. "I have no power to seduce man or
woman. I cannot win souls to heaven or to hell."

"But if you received new powers, such as you desire, would you use them
to win souls, three souls, to Lucifer?"

"Yes," I said with passionate earnestness. "I swear to you that I
would."

Suddenly the boy's voice laughed.

"_Quomodo cecidisti_, Lucifer!" he said. "When thou canst not contrive
to capture souls for thyself! But," he added, as if addressing himself
once more to me, after this strange ejaculation, "your words have,
perhaps, sealed the bond. Who knows? Words that come from the very heart
are often deeds. For, as we can never go back from things that we have
done, it may be that, sometimes, we can never go back from things that
we have said."

On the words he moved, and passed so swiftly by me into the twilight
down the glen that I never saw his face. I turned instinctively to look
after him; and, this was strange, it seemed that the wind at that very
moment must have turned with me, blowing from, instead of towards, the
mountain. This certainly was so; for the tongues of flame from my fire
bent backward on a sudden and leaned after the grey traveller, whose
steps died swiftly away among the rocks, and on the shuffling dead wood
and leaves of the birches and the oaks.

And then there came a singing in my ears, a beating of many drums in my
brain. I drooped and sank down by the fire in the mist. My fever came
upon me like a giant, and presently Gavin and Doctor Wedderburn,
searching in the night, found me in a delirium, and bore me back to
Carlounie.

II

THE SOUL OF DR WEDDERBURN

To emerge from a great illness is sometimes dreadful, sometimes divine.
To one man the return from the gates of death is a progress of despair