own, a creature as remote and as
little to be understood as the spirits of the dead.

"Have you ever, when wakeful in a hot night, with darkness
all about you, called yourself by name again and again? It
was a trick we dared sometimes when I was a girl. After a
while it is something else that is calling, something of
you but not in you, to which your soul answers at last; and
if you go on till the will to call is no longer your own,
the soul goes forth in response to it, and you are dead.
And even so, gaunt in the beam of the lamp, the Peruvian
seemed to insist upon himself, till the eyes of the
watchers were for him only, till that which they saw was
less the mean body of the smouser than the vehicle of the
potent soul within.

"Piet was a youth as solid in mind as in body, and ere the
scene grasped him against his will he says he saw with an
angry impatience the flicker of a leer on the darkened face
of the Peruvian. But it did not last. In a few minutes the
two young Burghers were not the only ones whom the spell
had subdued--the wizard was netted too. And then, as he
stood, his hands still fluttering, they heard him drone a
string of words, a dull chant, level like an incantation,
inevitably apt to the hour and the event.

"They did not know how long they crouched, watching
unwinkingly till their eyes grew sore; but at last it
seemed that the posturing and the words had made something
due. Jacobus started as though from sleep, and Piet, who
was not till then frightened, looked up quickly. He caught
sight of something--a shadow, a hint, a presence in the
darkness behind the naked man, and knew, somehow, with a
coldness of alarm, that IT had arrived. He barely realized
this knowledge when the power of the quietness and the
jugglery were rudely sundered, and the Peruvian, shrieking
and clucking in his throat, dived towards them and tried to
hide. He plunged frantically against the door, which gave
and let him fall through, and in a moment, with the cold
sweat of horror upon them, Piet and Jacobus struggled
through after him and ran with still hearts for the house.

"But in that moment that he was jammed in the narrow
doorway with his brother, Piet saw into the hut, and there
was something there. There was another with them.

"They came fast to the lighted room upon the heels of the
naked Peruvian, who fell on his face and writhed, weeping
in sheer terror. There was alarm, and chairs overturned,
and screami