cean. The prize at which this
adventure aims is so stupendous that I cannot name it."

"Oh, but you must, Philip. I am no more afraid of the local
constabulary than I am of the local notions as to what respectability
entails. I may confess, however, that I am afraid of wagering against
unknown odds."

Borsdale reflected. Then he said, with deliberation: "Dr. Herrick's
was, when you come to think of it, an unusual life. He is--or perhaps
I ought to say he was--upward of eighty-three. He has lived here for
over a half-century, and during that time he has never attempted to
make either a friend or an enemy. He was--indifferent, let us say.
Talking to Dr. Herrick was, somehow, like talking to a man in a
fog. . . . Meanwhile, he wrote his verses to imaginary women--to
Corinna and Julia, to Myrha, Electra and Perilla--those lovely, shadow
women who never, in so far as we know, had any real existence----"

Sir Thomas smiled. "Of course. They are mere figments of the poet,
pegs to hang rhymes on. And yet--let us go on. I know that Herrick
never willingly so much as spoke with a woman."

"Not in so far as we know, I said." And Borsdale paused. "Then, too,
he wrote such dainty, merry poems about the fairies. Yes, it was all
of fifty years ago that Dr. Herrick first appeared in print with his
_Description of the King and Queen of the Fairies_. The thought seems
always to have haunted him."

The knight's face changed, a little by a little. "I have long been an
amateur of the curious," he said, strangely quiet. "I do not think
that anything you may say will surprise me inordinately."

"He had found in every country in the world traditions of a race who
were human--yet more than human. That is the most exact fashion in
which I can express his beginnings. On every side he found the notion
of a race who can impinge on mortal life and partake of it--but always
without exercising the last reach of their endowments. Oh, the
tradition exists everywhere, whether you call these occasional
interlopers fauns, fairies, gnomes, ondines, incubi, or demons. They
could, according to these fables, temporarily restrict themselves into
our life, just as a swimmer may elect to use only one arm--or, a more
fitting comparison, become apparent to our human senses in the fashion
of a cube which can obtrude only one of its six surfaces into a plane.
You follow me, of course, sir?--to the triangles and circles and
hexagons this