e same stony, menacing stare.

The silence became unendurable. I felt that I must overcome my languor
so far as to address him. I am not a nervous man, and I never knew
before what Virgil meant when he wrote "adhoesit faucibus ora." At last
I managed to stammer out a few words, asking the intruder who he was and
what he wanted.

"Lieutenant Heatherstone," he answered, speaking slowly and gravely,
"you have committed this day the foulest sacrilege and the greatest
crime which it is possible for man to do. You have slain one of the
thrice blessed and reverend ones, an arch adept of the first degree, an
elder brother who has trod the higher path for more years than you
have numbered months. You have cut him off at a time when his labours
promised to reach a climax and when he was about to attain a height of
occult knowledge which would have brought man one step nearer to his
Creator. All this you have done without excuse, without provocation, at
a time when he was pleading the cause of the helpless and distressed.
Listen now to me, John Heatherstone.

"When first the occult sciences were pursued many thousands of years
ago, it was found by the learned that the short tenure of human
existence was too limited to allow a man to attain the loftiest heights
of inner life. The inquirers of those days directed their energies in
the first place, therefore, to the lengthening of their own days in
order that they might have more scope for improvement.

"By their knowledge of the secret laws of Nature they were enabled to
fortify their bodies against disease and old age. It only remained to
protect themselves against the assaults of wicked and violent men who
are ever ready to destroy what is wiser and nobler than themselves.
There was no direct means by which this protection could be effected,
but it was in some measure attained by arranging the occult forces in
such a way that a terrible and unavoidable retribution should await the
offender.

"It was irrevocably ordained by laws which cannot be reversed that any
one who should shed the blood of a brother who had attained a certain
degree of sanctity should be a doomed man. Those laws are extant to this
day, John Heatherstone, and you have placed yourself in their power.
King or emperor would be helpless before the forces which you have
called into play. What hope, then, is there for you?

"In former days these laws acted so instantaneously that the slayer
perished with his v