d, sport-loving English fellow--had once been under
the spell of a bronze statue that somebody had passed clean into?"

"You were under the hypnotic influence of your friend Ombos, probably,"
I suggested.

"You may think so, _now_; but you just wait till I have told you all
about Ombos, and the bronze statue. Then you'll be able to decide if it
was trickery.... It would be different if you could have seen the
statue."

Then Crabbe proceeded to unfold his strange tale.

"You know that when the war first broke out I was attached to the
Loamshires, and we were one of the first British Regiments to start for
the land across the water. After six months' fighting, during which
every day was crowded with enough incident to provide a three-reel
thriller for a cinema-man, I found myself quartered at Ypres. Have you
ever been to Ypres? If you have, it will act as a kind of antidote to
those wretched picture post-cards which show it in its last phase--a
heap of senseless wreckage. The 'Coal Boxes,' 'Jack Johnsons' and other
varied presents from Krupp's had not fallen on the town with such
lavishness at the time my regiment found shelter there. It was a June
afternoon when I first found my way there. A mellow drowsiness hung over
the Cloth Hall and Cathedral. It was indeed a very pleasant little town.
The old houses of the square, the Prior's Gate, the noble trees, the
stretch of green turf, all shared in the dream-like repose. In the Rue
Bar-le-Duc, as everybody knows, just where it winds around to the fine
gateway of the Cathedral, there is a row of little shops with bulging
leaded windows, dusty and delightful. The one that took my eye was an
antique shop. I had a whole regiment of aunts and uncles at home who in
every letter demanded souvenirs, and here was the chance to lodge a
shipping order, with about a hundred labels, and leave the old
antiquarian fogey to send 'em off. It was inside that I met Ombos for
the first time. I selected the souvenirs, and wrote labels; but old
Ombos made a devil of a muddle over sending them off, and a very prim
maiden aunt received a snuff box adorned with a young French lady in
very scanty attire.... By the way, you don't know my aunt Sylvia, do
you?"

Crabbe laughed heartily for the first time that evening.

"I spent some hours in the bulging window of that old shop examining the
wonderful collection of beautiful old things, and staggering about on
piles of andirons and copper warming