under his arm and
partly concealed by the sleeve of his gown. Watching him as he
approached the master's desk and spoke with Mr. Colfe, the
form-master, Dam noted that he had what appeared to be a long oblong
glass box of which the side turned towards him was white and opaque.

When Mr. Steynker stepped on to the dais, as Mr. Colfe took up his
books and departed, he placed the thing on the desk with the other
side to the class....

And there before Dam's starting, staring eyes, fastened to the white
back of the tall glass box, and immersed in colourless liquid was the
Terror.

He rose, gibbering, to his feet, pale as the dead, and pointed,
mopping and mowing like an idiot.

How should a glass box restrain the Fiend that had made his life a
Hell upon earth? What did Steynker and Colfe and these others--all
gaping at him open-mouthed--know of the Devil with whom he had
wrestled deep beneath the Pit itself for ten thousand centuries of
horror--centuries whose every moment was an aeon?

What could these innocent men and boys know of the living Damnation
that made him pray to die--provided only that he could be _really_
dead and finished, beyond all consciousness and fear. The fools!... to
think that it was a harmless, concrete thing. It would emerge in a
moment like the Fisherman's Geni from the Brass Bottle and grow as big
as the world. He felt he was going mad again.

"Help!" he suddenly shrieked. "_It is under my foot. It is moving ...
moving ... moving out_." He sprang to his astounded friend, Delorme,
and screamed to him for help--and then realizing that there was _no_
help, that neither man nor God could save him, he fled from the room
screaming like a wounded horse.

Rushing madly down the corridor, falling head-long down the stone
stairs, bolting blindly across the entrance-hall, he fled until
(unaware of his portly presence up to the moment when he rebounded
from him as a cricket-ball from a net) he violently encountered the
Head.

Scrambling beneath his gown the demented boy flung his arms around the
massy pillar of the Doctor's leg, and prayed aloud to him for help,
between heart-rending screams.

Now it is undeniable that no elderly gentleman, of whatsoever position
or condition, loves to be butted violently upon a generous lunch as he
makes his placid way to his arm-chair, cigar, book, and ultimate
pleasant doze. If he be pompous by profession, precise by practice,
dignified as a duty, a monument o