oth! chavajoth! chavajoth! I command thee by the
Key of Solomon and the great name Semhamphoras._"

* * * * *

A little way up the course of the burn the dead wood cracked and
shuffled under the pressure of descending feet. Again I heard a
scattering of the sheep upon the hillside. My hair stirred on my head
under my cap, and the noise of the falling water was intolerably loud to
me. I wanted to hear plainly, to hear what was coming down to me in the
mist. The brush-wood sang nearer. In the heavy and damp air there was
the small, sharp report of a branch snapped from a tree. I heard it drop
among the ferns close to me. And then in the mist and in the twilight I
saw a slim figure standing motionless. It was vague, but less vague than
a shadow. It seemed to be a man, or a youth, clad in a grey suit that
could scarcely be differentiated from the mist. The flames of my fire,
bent by a light breeze that had sprung up, stretched themselves towards
it, as if to salute it. And now I could not hear any movement of the
sheep; evidently they had gone to a distance. At first, seized with a
strange feeling of extreme, almost unutterable fear, I neither moved nor
spoke. Then, making a strong effort to regain control of my ordinary
faculties, I cried out in the twilight--

"What is that? What is it?"

"Only a stranger who has missed his way on the mountain, and wants to go
on to Wester Denoon."

The voice that came to me from the figure beyond the fire sounded, I
remember, quite young, like the voice of a boy. It was clear and level,
and perhaps a little formal. So that was all. A tourist--that was all!

"Can you direct me on the way?" the voice said.

I gave the required direction slowly, for I was still confused, nervous,
exhausted with my insane practices in the den. But the youth--as I
supposed he was--did not move away at once.

"What are you doing by this fire?" he said. "I heard your voice calling
by the torrent among the trees when I was a very long way off."

Strangely, I did not resent the question. Still more strangely, I was
impelled to give him the true answer to it.

"Raising the Devil!" he said. "And did he come to you?"

"No; of course not. You must think me mad."

"And why do you call him?"

Suddenly a desire to confide in this stranger, whose face I could not
see now, whose shadowy form I should, in all probability, never see
again, came upon me. My usual nervousness dese