t a pall
over me but over all of us. I did not like it, nor did I like him.
Perhaps it would have been just as well after all, I thought, had I
heeded my mother and stayed home.

Jed Counsell was the one who, innocently enough, started the thing that
changed the evening, that had begun so badly, into a nightmare.

"Jerry," he said, leaning across to me, "thinkin' of you s'afternoon.
Readin' an article about reincarnation. Remember we were arguin' it last
week? Well, this guy, whoever he was I've forgot, believes in it. Says
it's so. That people _do_ come back." With this opening shot Jed sat
back to await my answer. I liked these arguments and I liked to bear my
share in them, but now, instead of immediately answering the challenge,
I looked around to see if any other of our circle were going to answer
Jed. Then, deciding it was up to me, I shrugged off the strange feeling
the man in the corner had cast over me, and prepared to view my
opinions.

"That's just that fellow's belief, Jed," I said. "And just as he's got
his so have I mine. And on this subject at least I claim my opinion is
as good as anybody's." I was just getting nicely started, and a little
forgetting my distaste for the man in the corner, when the fellow
himself interrupted. He left his leaning place, and came creaking across
the floor to our circle around the store. I say he came "creaking" for
as he came he did creak. "Shoes," I naturally, almost unconsciously
decided, though the crazy notion was in my mind that the cracking I
heard did sound like bones and joints and sinews badly in need of oil.
The stranger sat his groaning self down among us, on a board lying
across a nail keg and an old chair. Only from the corner of my eye did I
see his movement, being friendly enough, despite my dislike, not to
allow too marked notice of his attempt to be sociable seem inhospitable
on my part. I was about to start again with my argument when Seth
Spears, sitting closest to the newcomer, deliberately got up from the
bench and went to the counter, telling Pruett as he went that he had to
have some sugar. It was all a farce, a pretext, I knew. I've known Seth
for years and had never known him before to take upon himself the buying
for his wife's kitchen. Seth simply would not sit beside the man.

* * * * *

At that I could keep my eyes from the stranger no longer, and the next
moment I felt my heart turn over within me, then lie s