ife were not yet wholly extinct. Aghast, I turned to
examine the charred and shrivelled figure on the floor.

Then all at once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the seared face in
which they were set, opened wide with an expression which I was unable
to interpret. The cracked lips tried to frame words which I could not
well understand. Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier, and again
I fancied that the words "years" and "curse" issued from the twisted
mouth. Still I was at a loss to gather the purport of his disconnected
speech. At my evident ignorance of his meaning, the pitchy eyes once
more flashed malevolently at me, until, helpless as I saw my opponent to
be, I trembled as I watched him.

Suddenly the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength, raised
his hideous head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then, as I remained,
paralyzed with fear, he found his voice and in his dying breath screamed
forth those words which have ever afterward haunted my days and my
nights. "Fool," he shrieked, "can you not guess my secret? Have you no
brain whereby you may recognize the will which has through six long
centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse upon your house? Have I not told
you of the great elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the secret of
Alchemy was solved? I tell you, it is I! I! =I! that have lived for six
hundred years to maintain my revenge=, FOR I AM CHARLES LE SORCIER!"

H. P. LOVECRAFT.

THE UNITED AMATEUR MARCH 1917

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC CRITICISM

=The Conservative= for October opens with Miss Olive G. Owen's tuneful
lines on "The Mocking Bird." Of the quality of Miss Owen's poetry it is
scarce necessary to speak; be it sufficient to say that the present
piece ranks among her best. In the intense fervour of the sentiment, and
the felicitous choice of the imagery, the touch of the born poet is
alike shown. Through an almost inexcusable editorial mistake of our own,
the first word of this poem is erroneously rendered. Line 1 should read:

"=Where= Southern moonlight softly falls."

"Old England and the Hyphen" is an attempt of the present critic to
demonstrate why relations between the United States and Mother England
must necessarily be closer than those between the States and any of the
really foreign powers. So patent and so inevitable is the essential
unity of the Anglo-Saxon world that such an essay as this ough