perial purple. Then there were the wine jars of
red earthenware, the memorial stones from graves, and the heads of broken
gods, with fragments of occult things used in the secret rites of
Mithras. Lucian read on the labels where all these objects were found: in
the churchyard, beneath the turf of the meadow, and in the old cemetery
near the forest; and whenever it was possible he would make his way to
the spot of discovery, and imagine the long darkness that had hidden gold
and stone and amber. All these investigations were necessary for the
scheme he had in view, so he became for some time quite a familiar figure
in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river. His
continual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants,
who flew to their windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements.
They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down
three times a week must of course be bad, but it seemed undiscoverable.
And Lucian on his side was at first a good deal put out by occasional
encounters with members of the Gervase or Dixon or Colley tribes; he had
often to stop and exchange a few conventional expressions, and such
meetings, casual as they were, annoyed and distracted him. He was no
longer infuriated or wounded by sneers of contempt or by the cackling
laughter of the young people when they passed him on the road (his hat
was a shocking one and his untidiness terrible), but such incidents were
unpleasant just as the smell of a drain was unpleasant, and threw the
strange mechanism of his thoughts out of fear for the time. Then he had
been disgusted by the affair of the boys and the little dog; the
loathsomeness of it had quite broken up his fancies. He had read books of
modern occultism, and remembered some of the experiments described. The
adept, it was alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness from his
brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world around him and
pass into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he could not perform
some such operation for his own benefit. Human beings were constantly
annoying him and getting in his way, was it not possible to annihilate
the race, or at all events to reduce them to wholly insignificant forms?
A certain process suggested itself to his mind, a work partly mental and
partly physical, and after two or three experiments he found to his
astonishment and delight that it was successful. Here, he thought, he h