e; the powers of
earth and of the spirit world were set against me. For a while my human
frame wasn't worth a lead nickel."

"The beyond, then, isn't entirely the abode of righteousness?"

"There are spirits of hell as well as of heaven."

"The Chinese," I told him, "call them Yin and Yang, spirits of dark and
light. Will you explain--it may be useful, if things are as you say--how
you fought the powers from beyond?"

"Do you remember what Lizzie Tuoey thought about Jannie and Stepan?" he
asked, apparently irrelevantly. "That time Stepan had an engagement with
Isabella of Spain." I didn't. "Well, she said that Jannie was jealous of
the queen."

McGeorge had, by his own account, really a dreadful time with what was
no better than common or, rather, uncommon murder. Two things were
evident on the plane of my own recognition--that he had succeeded in
holding the illusive affections of Ena, no small accomplishment in view
of her neurotic emotional instability, and that the elder Meekers had an
interest in the most worldly of all commodities, not exceeded by their
devotion to the immaculate dream of love beyond death.

The girl met McGeorge outside the house; he called defiantly in the face
of an unrelenting, outspoken opposition. It was in the Meeker front room
that he first realized his mundane existence was in danger. He could
give no description of what happened beyond the fact that suddenly he
was bathed in a cold, revolting air. It hung about him with the
undefinable feel and smell of death. A rotten air, he described it, and
could think of nothing better; remaining, he thought, for half a minute,
filling him with instinctive abject terror, and then lifting.

Ena, too, was affected; she was as rigid as if she were taking part in a
seance; and when she recovered, she hurried from the room. Immediately
after McGeorge heard her above quarrelling with Jannie. She returned in
tears, and said that they would have to give each other up. Here
McGeorge damned the worlds seen and unseen, and declared that he'd never
leave her. This, with his complete credulity, approached a notable
courage or frenzy of desire. He had no doubt but they would kill him.
Their facilities, you see, were unsurpassed.

Worse followed almost immediately. The next morning, to be accurate,
McGeorge was putting an edge on his razor--he had never given up the old
type--when an extraordinary seizure overtook him; the hand that held the
blade stopped