great flying reptiles of a
bygone age, his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. He
had groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed maniac
from a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he looked up, he
went white and staggered back.

"Gawd!" he almost screamed. "What is it?"

Attracted by Brady's cry the others seized their rifles as they
followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them that was
not moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady spoke again in
an almost inaudible voice. "Holy Mother protect us--it's a banshee!"

Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of danger, felt
a strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as slowly, not a
hundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself across the sky, its
huge, round eyes glaring down upon them. And until it disappeared over
the tops of the trees of a near-by wood the five men stood as though
paralyzed, their eyes never leaving the weird shape; nor never one of
them appearing to recall that he grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.

With the passing of the thing, came the reaction. Tippet sank to the
ground and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Gord," he moaned. "Tyke
me awy from this orful plice." Brady, recovered from the first shock,
swore loud and luridly. He called upon all the saints to witness that
he was unafraid and that anybody with half an eye could have seen that
the creature was nothing more than "one av thim flyin' alligators" that
they all were familiar with.

"Yes," said Sinclair with fine sarcasm, "we've saw so many of them with
white shrouds on 'em."

"Shut up, you fool!" growled Brady. "If you know so much, tell us what
it was after bein' then."

Then he turned toward Bradley. "What was it, sor, do you think?" he
asked.

Bradley shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "It looked like a
winged human being clothed in a flowing white robe. Its face was more
human than otherwise. That is the way it looked to me; but what it
really was I can't even guess, for such a creature is as far beyond my
experience or knowledge as it is beyond yours. All that I am sure of
is that whatever else it may have been, it was quite material--it was
no ghost; rather just another of the strange forms of life which we
have met here and with which we should be accustomed by this time."

Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. "Yer cawn't tell me," he
cried. "Hi seen