only stayed a night or two in the inn?"
queried the doctor.

Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled upon the mat.

"I must have gained time somewhere," he said at length--"somewhere or
somehow. I certainly had a week to my credit. I can't explain it. I can
only give you the fact."

"And this happened to you last year, since when you have never been back
to the place?"

"Last autumn, yes," murmured Vezin; "and I have never dared to go back.
I think I never want to."

"And, tell me," asked Dr. Silence at length, when he saw that the little
man had evidently come to the end of his words and had nothing more to
say, "had you ever read up the subject of the old witchcraft practices
during the Middle Ages, or been at all interested in the subject?"

"Never!" declared Vezin emphatically. "I had never given a thought to
such matters so far as I know--"

"Or to the question of reincarnation, perhaps?"

"Never--before my adventure; but I have since," he replied
significantly.

There was, however, something still on the man's mind that he wished to
relieve himself of by confession, yet could only with difficulty bring
himself to mention; and it was only after the sympathetic tactfulness of
the doctor had provided numerous openings that he at length availed
himself of one of them, and stammered that he would like to show him the
marks he still had on his neck where, he said, the girl had touched him
with her anointed hands.

He took off his collar after infinite fumbling hesitation, and lowered
his shirt a little for the doctor to see. And there, on the surface of
the skin, lay a faint reddish line across the shoulder and extending a
little way down the back towards the spine. It certainly indicated
exactly the position an arm might have taken in the act of embracing.
And on the other side of the neck, slightly higher up, was a similar
mark, though not quite so clearly defined.

"That was where she held me that night on the ramparts," he whispered, a
strange light coming and going in his eyes.

* * * * *

It was some weeks later when I again found occasion to consult John
Silence concerning another extraordinary case that had come under my
notice, and we fell to discussing Vezin's story. Since hearing it, the
doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his
secretaries had discovered that Vezin's ancestors had actually lived for
generations in the very town whe