length;
then the floor became horizontal again on the lower level. At the same
time the passage widened. Cleggett stretched one arm out, then the
other; he could not touch the wall on either hand. He stood erect and
held his hand up; the roof was six inches above his head. He was in a
room of some sort. Wishing, if possible, to learn the extent of this
subterranean chamber, which he did not doubt had at one time been used
as a cave and storehouse of smugglers, Cleggett began to sidle around
walls, feeling his way with his hands.

He dislodged a pebble. It rolled to the ground with what was really a
slight sound.

But to Cleggett, who had been getting more and more excited, it was
loud as an avalanche. He stopped and held his breath; he fancied that
he had heard another noise besides the one which his pebble made. But
he could not be sure.

The sensation that he was not alone suddenly gripped him with
overwhelming force. His heart began to beat more quickly; the blood
drummed in his ears. Nevertheless, he kept his head. He took his
pocket lantern in his left hand, and his pistol in his right, and
leaned with his back against the wall. He listened. He heard nothing.

But the eerie feeling that he was watched grew upon him. Presently he
fancied that the darkness began to vibrate, as if an electrical current
of some sort were being passed through it, and it might forthwith burst
into light. Cleggett, as we know, was not easily frightened. But now
he was possessed of a strange feeling, akin to terror, but which was at
the same time not any terror of physical injury. He did not fear Loge;
in dark or daylight he was ready to grapple with him and fight it out;
nevertheless he feared. That he could not say what he feared only
increased his fear.

Children say they are "afraid of the dark." It is not the dark which
they are afraid of. It is the bodiless presences which they imagine in
the dark. It was so with Cleggett now. He was not daunted by anything
that could strike a blow. But the sense of a personality began to
encompass him. It pressed in upon him, played upon him, embraced him;
his flesh tingled as if he were being brushed; he felt his hair stir.
One recognizes a flower by its odor. So a soul flings off, in some
inexplicable way, the sense of itself. This force that laid itself
upon Cleggett and flowed around him had an individuality without a
body. Not through his senses, but psychically, h