anctuary
itself, was a small table covered with an embroidered shawl, worked in
spangles that glittered and shone, and beneath the table were a number
of smooth stones.

Leh Shin locked his hands together and passed up the aisle, close to
where the palm trees rustled and stirred, and fear was upon him like
that of a hungry dog. He crossed a line of light cast by some candles,
and it seemed to him that the curtains moved as he approached. The Joss
House was apparently empty, and yet it did not seem empty. Invisible
eyes watched behind the carved screens that shut out the priests' houses
on either side, invisible ears might easily catch the lowest whisper of
his prayer. Soundless impressions of moving things that had no shape
haunted his consciousness, and he started in panic as his own shadow
fell before him when he stepped across the burning candles and slid into
the close alley between the table and the shrine.

He bent down suddenly and, feeling on the cold marble of the floor, took
up two of the stones and beat them together with the loud clapping noise
which proclaimed a suppliant. Bowed in the close space, he repeated his
prayer the requisite number of times, and it seemed to Leh Shin that the
Joss heard and accepted: the Joss who took visible shape in his mind,
with a face half-human and half-bestial, and who capered with a drawn
sword in his hand.

Over his head the heavy curtains swayed again, and the tittering noise
from a nest of bats sounded like ghostly laughter. His prayer had drawn
power to his aid, out of the unknown place where the gods live, and
loosed it in response to his cry. He was only Leh Shin, a poor Chinaman
who kept a miserable shop in the native quarter and an opium den down
where the river water choked and gurgled at night, but he felt that he
had touched something in the terrible shadows, and once more he beat the
stones together, his face pouring with sweat. As the noise echoed up
again, the last candle fell dying into a yellow pool of melted wax, and
went out with an expiring flicker; and Leh Shin beat his hands against
the darkness that shut upon him like a wall. He sprang to his feet and
ran, and as he went wings seemed to bear down behind him. There was
terror alive in the Joss House, and before that terror he fled panting
and trembling, fearful that hands would close upon his black garments
and drag him back, holding him until he went mad. As he made for the
door he fancied he saw a