e made our preparations for
sitting up all night.

"First, we borrowed two policemen's dark lanterns from the station
nearby, and where the superintendent and I were friendly, and as soon as
it was really dusk, the landlord went up to his house for his gun. I had
the sword bayonet I have told you about; and when the landlord got back,
we sat talking in my study until nearly midnight.

"Then we lit the lanterns and went upstairs. We placed the lanterns, gun
and bayonet handy on the table; then I shut and sealed the bedroom doors;
afterward we took our seats, and turned off the lights.

"From then until two o'clock, nothing happened; but a little after two,
as I found by holding my watch near the faint glow of the closed
lanterns, I had a time of extraordinary nervousness; and I bent toward
the landlord, and whispered to him that I had a queer feeling something
was about to happen, and to be ready with his lantern; at the same time I
reached out toward mine. In the very instant I made this movement, the
darkness which filled the passage seemed to become suddenly of a dull
violet color; not, as if a light had been shone; but as if the natural
blackness of the night had changed color. And then, coming through this
violet night, through this violet-colored gloom, came a little naked
Child, running. In an extraordinary way, the Child seemed not to be
distinct from the surrounding gloom; but almost as if it were a
concentration of that extraordinary atmosphere; as if that gloomy color
which had changed the night, came from the Child. It seems impossible to
make clear to you; but try to understand it.

"The Child went past me, running, with the natural movement of the legs
of a chubby human child, but in an absolute and inconceivable silence. It
was a very small Child, and must have passed under the table; but I saw
the Child through the table, as if it had been only a slightly darker
shadow than the colored gloom. In the same instant, I saw that a
fluctuating glimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun-barrels
and the blade of the sword bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of
glimmering light, floating unsupported where the tabletop should have
shown solid.

"Now, curiously, as I saw these things, I was subconsciously aware that I
heard the anxious breathing of the landlord, quite clear and labored,
close to my elbow, where he waited nervously with his hands on the
lantern. I realized in that moment that