e Barrier on the ghostly frontier; erect, arms folded,
fronting the Breach in that inconceivably mighty wall. Above, away out
of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.

This I had seen before. But behind me lay that which I had not seen. The
mists I believed to be eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea
stretched parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even a
horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between these two immensities
on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In
the Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there reared Itself
against me.

"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by
the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay,
crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave my immemorial age?"

It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It stooped, a lowering
menace.

"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since the youngest days of the
world have I not answered? Have I not brought my presence to the
magician's lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible? When
the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am
the guardian of the Barrier. Whoever would pass this way must pass me.
Have you the power? Die, then, and begone."

With a long heaving sound of waters in movement, the gray sea stirred
from its stillness. As if drawn to some center out of sight, the tide
began to recede down that strange beach. Then realization came to me
that here was the ocean which, invisible, had surged icy death upon me a
while past. The ocean now gathered for the final wave that should
overwhelm the defeated.

"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was
yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do
with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living
or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look
upon you, if you have visible form."

Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing
seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying,
hurrying; the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded
this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft
in the great wall. For there the cold darkness was writhing and turning,
visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a glassy, twisting river might
look by night. And as one might glimps