ired, have been reprinted so often
as to be almost hackneyed, while others have been of necessity omitted
because of the limitations of space.

D.S.

NEW YORK,
March, 1921.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: THE IMPERISHABLE GHOST

THE WILLOWS
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

THE SHADOWS ON THE WALL
BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN

THE MESSENGER
BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

LAZARUS
BY LEONID ANDREYEV

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS
BY W. F. HARVEY

THE MASS OF SHADOWS
BY ANATOLE FRANCE

WHAT WAS IT?
BY FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN

THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT
BY AMBROSE BIERCE

THE SHELL OF SENSE
BY OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR

THE WOMAN AT SEVEN BROTHERS
BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

AT THE GATE
BY MYLA JO CLOSSER

LIGEIA
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

THE HAUNTED ORCHARD
BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

THE BOWMEN
BY ARTHUR MACHEN

A GHOST
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

The Willows

BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

From _The Listener_, by Algernon Blackwood. Published in America by
E.P. Dutton, and in England by Everleigh Nash, Ltd. By permission
of the publishers and Algernon Blackwood.

I

After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Buda-Pesth, the Danube
enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters
spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country
becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low
willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy
blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may
be seen in large straggling letters the word _Suempfe_, meaning marshes.

In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown
islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes
bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the
sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows
never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they
remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on
slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as
grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the
impression that the entire plain is moving and _alive_. For the wind
sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves
instead of waves of water,