invoked.

Of wild, fantastic dances of the Devil-worshippers of Madagascar, where
even the very semblance of humanity disappeared in the fantastic excesses
of their orgies.

Of strange doings of gloom and mystery in the rock-perched monasteries of
Thibet.

Of awful sacrifices, all to mystic ends, in the innermost recesses of
Cathay.

Of weird movements with masses of poisonous snakes by the medicine-men of
the Zuni and Mochi Indians in the far south-west of the Rockies, beyond
the great plains.

Of secret gatherings in vast temples of old Mexico, and by dim altars of
forgotten cities in the heart of great forests in South America.

Of rites of inconceivable horror in the fastnesses of Patagonia.

Of . . . Here I once more pulled myself up. Such thoughts were no kind
of proper preparation for what I might have to endure. My work that
night was to be based on love, on hope, on self-sacrifice for the woman
who in all the world was the closest to my heart, whose future I was to
share, whether that sharing might lead me to Hell or Heaven. The hand
which undertook such a task must have no trembling.

Still, those horrible memories had, I am bound to say, a useful part in
my preparation for the ordeal. They were of fact which I had seen, of
which I had myself been in part a sharer, and which I had survived. With
such experiences behind me, could there be aught before me more dreadful?
. . .

Moreover, if the coming ordeal was of supernatural or superhuman order,
could it transcend in living horror the vilest and most desperate acts of
the basest men? . . .

With renewed courage I felt my way before me, till my sense of touch told
me that I was at the screen behind which lay the stair to the Crypt.

There I waited, silent, still.

My own part was done, so far as I knew how to do it. Beyond this, what
was to come was, so far as I knew, beyond my own control. I had done
what I could; the rest must come from others. I had exactly obeyed my
instructions, fulfilled my warranty to the utmost in my knowledge and
power. There was, therefore, left for me in the present nothing but to
wait.

It is a peculiarity of absolute darkness that it creates its own
reaction. The eye, wearied of the blackness, begins to imagine forms of
light. How far this is effected by imagination pure and simple I know
not. It may be that nerves have their own senses that bring thought to
the depository common to all the human funct