me.

The comfort of light springing up in the room! The relief of seeing
normal, pleasant surroundings! Truly light is an elixir of courage to
man.

That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force to rise. Nor did I altogether
wish to rise and go. I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my
self-respect also? Was I to run a beaten man from this peril, after
standing against my enemy so long?

Should I not rather stand on this my ground where I was not the "lame
feller"?

Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night
stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds
indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of
goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam.
The series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued
on, dying away down the creek.

As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise, the light
was withdrawn from every lamp in the room. At the same moment, the
electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I heard its
progress across the muffling softness of the rug, across the polished
wood beyond, and final stoppage at some point out of my reach.

As vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing mass
within the curdled air, so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared
Itself in the night and stared in upon me. As so many times, I felt the
Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me,
poised to crush, yet withheld by a force greater than either of us. The
venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me, fouling
the breath I drew. My lungs labored.

"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine. "Frail and presumptuous
Will that has dared oppose mine, you are conquered. This is the hour
foretold to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength. Weakling,
feel the death surf break upon you. Fall down before me. Cower--plead!"

Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for the wash of the
invisible sea never had come to me until tonight. And there was Desire's
saying that I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift of
knowledge of the book. But I summoned my forces.

"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not met front to front these
many nights? And who has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return, but
I live. The duel is not lost."

"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken my gift that you might
spy meanly o