that only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has
summoned, nor could a murderess attain that lofty art.

We were given a glimpse of a frantic girl crouched in the useless
pentagram traced on the floor for her protection, covering her beauty
with the cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon her between
the overturned silver lamps.

A deepening horror gathered about the house of Mistress Desire Michell.
The old dame who had been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place
and fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child would come near the
garden, though fruit and nuts rotted away where they dropped from
overripeness. No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin had
died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By night she waged hideous
battle against her Visitor; using woman's cunning, essaying every
expedient and art her books suggested to her desperate need.

With each conflict, her strength and resource waned, while That which
she held at bay knew no weariness. Time was not, for it, nor change of
purpose.

"I faint, I fail!" she wrote. "The Sea of Dread breaks about my feet. It
is midnight. The pentagram fades from the floor--the nine lamps die--the
breath of the One at the casement is upon me----"

Vere stopped.

"A handful of pages have been torn out here," he stated. "The next entry
that I can read is in the middle of a stained page, and must be
considerably later on."

Phillida made an odd little noise like a whimper, clutching at his
sleeve. The third shock for which I had been waiting shuddered through
the house, this time distinctly enough for all to feel. A gust of wind
went through the wet trees outside like a gasp.

"Ethan, what was that?" she stammered. "Oh, I'm afraid! Cousin
Roger----?"

I had no voice to answer her. In my ears was the rush and surge of that
sea whose waters had gripped me in the past night. I felt the icy
death-tide hiss around me in its first returning wave, rise to my knee's
height, then sink away down its unearthly beach. What I had dimly known
all day, underlying Vere's sturdy cheerfulness and our plans and
efforts, was the truth. Through those intervening hours of daylight I
had remained my enemy's prisoner, bound on that shore we both knew well,
until It pleased or had power to return and finish with me. No doubt It
was governed by laws, as we are.

As before, the cold struck a paralysis across my senses. Vere's
reassurance sounded faint and dist