he kitchen garden, though never actually traced to him, seem to me
full of dreadful suggestion."

I laughed again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded
one of the story of Giles de Rays, marechal of France, who was said to
have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one
hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and
who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not
"rise," and only returned to his subject.

"His suicide seems to have been only just in time to escape arrest," he
said.

"A magician of no high order then," I observed sceptically, "if suicide
was his only way of evading the country police."

"The police of London and St. Petersburg rather," returned Shorthouse;
"for the headquarters of this pretty company was somewhere in Russia,
and his apparatus all bore the marks of the most skilful foreign make. A
Russian woman then employed in the household--governess, or
something--vanished, too, about the same time and was never caught. She
was no doubt the cleverest of the lot. And, remember, the object of this
appalling group was not mere vulgar gain, but a kind of knowledge that
called for the highest qualities of courage and intellect in the
seekers."

I admit I was impressed by the man's conviction of voice and manner, for
there is something very compelling in the force of an earnest man's
belief, though I still affected to sneer politely.

"But, like most Black Magicians, the fellow only succeeded in compassing
his own destruction--that of his tools, rather, and of escaping
himself."

"So that he might better accomplish his objects _elsewhere and
otherwise_," said Shorthouse, giving, as he spoke, the most minute
attention to the cleaning of the lock.

"Elsewhere and otherwise," I gasped.

"As if the shell he left hanging from the rafter in the barn in no way
impeded the man's spirit from continuing his dreadful work under new
conditions," he added quietly, without noticing my interruption. "The
idea being that he sometimes revisits the garden and the barn, chiefly
the barn--"

"The barn!" I exclaimed; "for what purpose?"

"Chiefly the barn," he finished, as if he had not heard me, "that is,
when there is anybody in it."

I stared at him without speaking, for there was a wonder in me how he
would add to this.

"When he wants fresh material, that is--he comes to steal from the
living."

"Fresh material!" I repeated a