ame to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given."

"But you will come again?"

"Never."

"What? The Thing will come, and not you?"

"What have I to do with It, who am more helpless before It than you? Go;
and give thanks that you may."

"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could. "I am not going away from
this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to
me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me
half-convinced of what I should do."

"I can stay no longer."

"Why can you not come again?"

"You plan to trap me," she reproached.

"No. Word of honor! You shall come and go as you please; I will not make
a movement toward you."

"Not try--to see me, even?" she hesitated.

"Not even that, if you forbid."

There was a long pause.

"Perhaps----" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had
begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room.

She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike
me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no
reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise.
Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric
switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her
entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp,
and this time light flashed over the room.

I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was
disappointed.

As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four.
Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of
coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and
bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in
my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath
the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking
foulness of mould and decay.

I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of
sunrise.

CHAPTER VII

"For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon
sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate
perfumes."--ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY.

The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese chimes, merrily
summoned me to the dining-room; a homely spell to exercise the phantoms
of the night.

My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and
blue skirt, was alread