must he henceforth speak and act. By a happy accident he had
opened the path, and must see to it that his further steps did not
retrograde.

Still Nurse answered not a word, which was the less surprising,
inasmuch as she had been dumb for a quarter of a century past. But
Balder, supposing her silence to proceed from stupidity or deafness,
repeated more loudly and peremptorily,--

"Doctor Glyphic,--is he here? is he alive?"

He felt a morbid curiosity to hear what reply would be made to the
question whose answer only he could know. But he was puzzled to
observe that it appeared to throw Nurse into a state of agitation as
great as though she had herself been the perpetrator of Balder's
crime! She stood quaking and irresolute, now peeping for a moment
from behind her screen, then dodging back with an increase of panic.

This display--rendered more uncouth by its voicelessness--revolted the
aesthetic sensibilities of Helwyse. Besides, what was the meaning of
it? Had it actually been Davy Jones with whom he had striven on the
midnight sea? and had his adversary, instead of drowning, spread his
bat-wings for home, and left his supposititious murderer to disquiet
himself in vain? Verily, a practical joke worthy its author!

This conceit revealed others, as a lightning-flash the midnight
landscape. Balder was encircled by witchcraft,--had been ferried by a
real Charon to no imaginary Hades. The quaint secluded beauty of
circumstance was an illusion, soon to be dispelled. Gnulemah
herself--miserable thought!--was perhaps a thing of evil; what if this
very hag were she in another form? Glancing round in the deepening
twilight, Balder fancied the dark, still plants and tropic shrubs
assumed demoniac forms, bending and crowding about him. The old witch
yonder was muttering some infernal spell; already he felt numbness in
his limbs, dizziness in his brain.

The devils are gathering nearer. A heavy, heated atmosphere quivers
before his eyes, or else the witch and her unholy crew are uniting in
a reeling dance. In vain does Balder try to shut his eyes and escape
the giddy spectacle; they stare widely open and see things
supernatural. Nor can he ward off these with his hands, which are
rigid before him, and defy his will. The devilish jig becomes wilder,
and careers through the air, Balder sweeping with it. In mid-whirl, he
sees the crocodile,--cold, motionless, waiting with long, dry
jaws--for what?

A cry breaks from him. W