Project Gutenberg Australia

Title:      The Novel of the Black Seal
Author:     Arthur Machen
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0601861.txt
Edition:    1
Language:   English
Character set encoding:     Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted:          June 2006
Date most recently updated: January 2011

This eBook was produced by: Malcolm Farmer

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au


Title:      The Novel of the Black Seal
Author:     Arthur Machen




The Novel of the Black Seal

Related By The Young Lady In Leicester Square




Prologue


'I see you are a determined rationalist,' said the lady. 'Did you not
hear me say that I have had experiences even more terrible? I too was
once a sceptic, but after what I have known I can no longer affect to
doubt.'

'Madam,' replied Mr. Phillipps, 'no one shall make me deny my faith. I
will never believe, nor will I pretend to believe, that two and two make
five, nor will I on any pretences admit the existence of two-sided
triangles.'

'You are a little hasty,' rejoined the lady. 'But may I ask you if you
ever heard the name of Professor Gregg, the authority on ethnology and
kindred subjects?'

'I have done much more than merely hear of Professor Gregg,' said
Phillipps. 'I always regarded him as one of our most acute and
clear-headed observers; and his last publication, the _Textbook of
Ethnology_, struck me as being quite admirable in its kind. Indeed, the
book had but come into my hands when I heard of the terrible accident
which cut short Gregg's career. He had, I think, taken a country house
in the west of England for the summer, and is supposed to have fallen
into a river. So far as I remember, his body was never recovered.'

'Sir, I am sure that you are discreet. Your conversation seems to
declare as much, and the very title of that little work of yours which
you mentioned assures me that you are no empty trifler. In a word, I
feel that I may depend on you. You appear to be under the impression
that Professor Gregg is dead; I have no reason to believe that that is
the case.'

'What?' cried Phillipps, astonished and perturbed. 'You do not hint that
there was anything disgraceful? I cannot believe it. Gregg was a man of
clearest character; his private life was one of great benevolence; and
though I myself am free from delusions, I believe him to have been a
sincere and devout Christian. Surely you cannot mean to insinuate that
some disreputable history forced him to flee the country?'

'Again you are in a hurry.' replied the lady. 'I said nothing of all
this. Briefly, then, I must tell you that Professor Gregg left this
house one morning in full health both in mind and body. He never
returned, but his watch and chain, a purse containing three sovereigns
in gold, and some loose silver, with a ring that he wore habitually,
were found three days later on a wild and savage hillside, many miles
from the river. These articles were placed beside a limestone rock of
fantastic form; they had been wrapped into a parcel with a kind of rough
parchment which was secured with gut. The parcel was opened, and the
inner side of the parchment bore an inscription done with some red
substance; the characters were undecipherable, but seemed to be a
corrupt cuneiform.'

'You interest me intensely,' said Phillipps. 'Would you mind continuing
your story? The circumstance you have mentioned seems to me of the most
inexplicable character, and I thirst for an elucidation.'

The young lady seemed to meditate for a moment, and she then proceeded
to relate the


NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL


I must now give you some fuller particulars of my history. I am the
daughter of a civil engineer, Steven Lally by name, who was so
unfortunate as to die suddenly at the outset of his career, and before
he had accumulated sufficient means to support his wife and her two
children.

My mother contrived to keep the small household going on resources which
must have been incredibly small; we lived in a remote country village,
because most of the necessaries of life were cheaper than in a town, but
even so we were brought up with the severest economy. My father was a
clever and well-read man, and left behind him a small but select
collection of books, containing the best Greek, Latin, and English
classics, and these books were the only amusement we possessed. My
brother, I remember, learnt Latin out of Descartes's _Meditationes_, and
I, in place of the little tales which children are usually told to read,
had nothing more charming than a translation of the _Gesta Romanorum_.
We grew up thus, quiet and studious children, and in course of time my
brother provided for himself in the manner I have mentioned. I continued
to live at home: my poor mother had become an invalid, and demanded my
continual care, and about two years ago she died after many months of
painful illness. My situation was a terrible one; the shabby furniture
barely sufficed to pay the debts I had been forced to contract, and the
books I dispatched to my brother, knowing how he would value them. I was
absolutely alone; I was aware how poorly my brother was paid; and though
I came up to London in the hope of finding employment, with the
understanding that he would defray my expenses, I swore it should only
be for a month, and that if I could not in that time find some work I
would starve rather than deprive him of the few miserable pounds he had
laid by for his day of trouble. I took a little room in a distant
suburb; the cheapest that I could find; I lived on bread and tea, and I
spent my time in vain answering of advertisements, and vainer walks to
addresses I had noted. Day followed on day, and week on week, and still
I was unsuccessful, till at last the term I had appointed drew to a
close, and I saw before me the grim prospect of slowly dying of
starvation. My landlady was good-natured in her way; she knew the
slenderness of my means, and I am sure that she would not have turned me
out of doors; it remained for me then to go away, and to try to die in
some quiet place. It was winter then, and a thick white fog gathered in
the early part of the afternoon, becoming more dense as the day wore on;
it was a Sunday, I remember, and the people of the house were at chapel.
At about three o'clock I crept out and walked away as quickly as I
could, for I was weak from abstinence. The white mist wrapped all the
streets in silence, a hard frost had gathered thick upon the bare
branches of the trees, and frost crystals glittered on the wooden
fences, and on the cold, cruel ground beneath my feet. I walked on,
turning to right and left in utter haphazard, without caring to look up
at the names of the streets, and all that I remember of my walk on that
Sunday afternoon seems but the broken fragments of an evil dream. In a
confused vision I stumbled on, through roads half town and half country,
grey fields melting into the cloudy world of mist on one side of me, and
on the other comfortable villas with a glow of firelight flickering on
the walls, but all unreal; red brick walls and lighted windows, vague
trees, and glimmering country, gas-lamps beginning to star the white
shadows, the vanishing perspectives of the railway line beneath high
embankments, the green and red of the signal lamps--all these were but
momentary pictures flashed on my tired brain and senses numbed by
hunger. Now and then I would hear a quick step ringing on the iron road,
and men would pass me well wrapped up, walking fast for the sake of
warmth, and no doubt eagerly foretasting the pleasures of a glowing
hearth, with curtains tightly drawn about the frosted panes, and the
welcomes of their friends, but as the early evening darkened and night
approached, foot-passengers got fewer and fewer, and I passed through
street after street alone. In the white silence I stumbled on, as
desolate as if I trod the streets of a buried city; and as I grew more
weak and exhausted, something of the horror of death was folding thickly
round my heart. Suddenly, as I turned a corner, some one accosted me
courteously beneath the lamp-post, and I heard a voice asking if I could
kindly point the way to Avon Road. At the sudden shock of human accents
I was prostrated, and my strength gave way; I fell all huddled on the
sidewalk, and wept and sobbed and laughed in violent hysteria. I had
gone out prepared to die, and as I stepped across the threshold that had
sheltered me, I consciously bade adieu to all hopes and all
remembrances; the door clanged behind me with the noise of thunder, and
I felt that an iron curtain had fallen on the brief passage of my life,
that henceforth I was to walk a little way in a world of gloom and
shadow; I entered on the stage of the first act of death. Then came my
wandering in the mist, the whiteness wrapping all things, the void
streets, and muffled silence, till when that voice spoke to me it was as
if I had died and life returned to me. In a few minutes I was able to
compose my feelings, and as I rose I saw that I was confronted by a
middle-aged gentleman of pleasing appearance, neatly and correctly
dressed. He looked at me with an expression of great pity, but before I
could stammer out my ignorance of the neighbourhood, for indeed I had
not the slightest notion of where I had wandered, he spoke.

'My dear madam,' he said, 'you seem in some terrible distress. You
cannot think how you alarmed me. But may I inquire the nature of your
trouble? I assure you that you can safely confide in me.'

'You are very kind,' I replied. 'But I fear there is nothing to be done.
My condition seems a hopeless one.'

'Oh, nonsense, nonsense! You are too young to talk like that. Come, let
us walk down here and you must tell me your difficulty. Perhaps I may be
able to help you.'

There was something very soothing and persuasive in his manner, and as
we walked together I gave him an outline of my story, and told of the
despair that had oppressed me almost to death.

'You were wrong to give in so completely,' he said, when I was silent.
'A month is too short a time in which to feel one's way in London.
London, let me tell you, Miss Lally, does not lie open and undefended;
it is a fortified place, fossed and double-moated with curious
intricacies. As must always happen in large towns, the conditions of
life have become hugely artificial, no mere simple palisade is run up to
oppose the man or woman who would take the place by storm, but serried
lines of subtle contrivances, mines, and pitfalls which it needs a
strange skill to overcome. You, in your simplicity, fancied you had only
to shout for these walls to sink into nothingness, but the time is gone
for such startling victories as these. Take courage; you will learn the
secret of success before very long.'

'Alas! sir,' I replied, 'I have no doubt your conclusions are correct,
but at the present moment I seem to be in a fair way to die of
starvation. You spoke of a secret; for Heaven's sake tell it me, if you
have any pity for my distress.'

He laughed genially. 'There lies the strangeness of it all. Those who
know the secret cannot tell it if they would; it is positively as
ineffable as the central doctrine of freemasonry. But I may say this,
that you yourself have penetrated at least the outer husk of the
mystery,' and he laughed again.

'Pray do not jest with me,' I said. 'What have I done, _que sçais-je?_ I
am so far ignorant that I have not the slightest idea of how my next
meal is to be provided.'

'Excuse me. You ask what you have done. You have met me. Come, we will
fence no longer. I see you have self-education, the only education which
is not infinitely pernicious, and I am in want of a governess for my two
children. I have been a widower for some years; my name is Gregg. I
offer you the post I have named, and shall we say a salary of a hundred
a year'?'

I could only stutter out my thanks, and slipping a card with his
address, and a banknote by way of earnest, into my hand, Mr. Gregg bade
me good-bye, asking me to call in a day or two.

Such was my introduction to Professor Gregg, and can you wonder that the
remembrance of despair and the cold blast that had blown from the gates
of death upon me made me regard him as a second father? Before the close
of the week I was installed in my new duties. The Professor had leased
an old brick manor-house in a western suburb of London, and here,
surrounded by pleasant lawns and orchards, and soothed with the murmur
of ancient elms that rocked their boughs above the roof, the new chapter
of my life began. Knowing as you do the nature of the professor's
occupation, you will not be surprised to hear that the house teemed with
books, and cabinets full of strange, and even hideous, objects filled
every available nook in the vast low rooms. Gregg was a man whose one
thought was for knowledge, and I too before long caught something of his
enthusiasm, and strove to enter into his passion of research. In a few
months I was perhaps more his secretary than the governess of the two
children, and many a night I have sat at the desk in the glow of the
shaded lamp while he, pacing up and down in the rich gloom of the
firelight, dictated to me the substance of his _Textbook of Ethnology_.
But amidst these more sober and accurate studies I always detected a
something hidden, a longing and desire for some object to which he did
not allude; and now and then he would break short in what he was saying
and lapse into reverie, entranced, as it seemed to me, by some distant
prospect of adventurous discovery. The textbook was at last finished,
and we began to receive proofs from the printers, which were entrusted
to me for a first reading, and then underwent the final revision of the
professor. All the while his weariness of the actual business he was
engaged on increased, and it was with the joyous laugh of a schoolboy
when term is over that he one day handed me a copy of the book. 'There,'
he said, 'I have kept my word; I promised to write it, and it is done
with. Now I shall be free to live for stranger things; I confess it,
Miss Lally, I covet the renown of Columbus; you will, I hope, see me
play the part of an explorer.'

'Surely,' I said, 'there is little left to explore. You have been born a
few hundred years too late for that.'

'I think you are wrong,' he replied; 'there are still, depend upon it,
quaint, undiscovered countries and continents of strange extent. Ah,
Miss Lally! believe me, we stand amidst sacraments and mysteries full of
awe, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Life, believe me, is
no simple thing, no mass of grey matter and congeries of veins and
muscles to be laid naked by the surgeon's knife; man is the secret which
I am about to explore, and before I can discover him I must cross over
weltering seas indeed, and oceans and the mists of many thousand years.
You know the myth of the lost Atlantis; what if it be true, and I am
destined to be called the discoverer of that wonderful land?'

I could see excitement boiling beneath his words, and in his face was
the heat of the hunter; before me stood a man who believed himself
summoned to tourney with the unknown. A pang of joy possessed me when I
reflected that I was to be in a way associated with him in the
adventure, and I, too, burned with the lust of the chase, not pausing to
consider that I knew not what we were to unshadow.

The next morning Professor Gregg took me into his inner study, where,
ranged against the wall, stood a nest of pigeonholes, every drawer
neatly labelled, and the results of years of toil classified in a few
feet of space.

'Here,' he said, 'is my life; here are all the facts which I have
gathered together with so much pains, and yet it is all nothing. No,
nothing to what I am about to attempt. Look at this'; and he took me to
an old bureau, a piece fantastic and faded, which stood in a corner of
the room. He unlocked the front and opened one of the drawers.

'A few scraps of paper,' he went on, pointing to the drawer, 'and a lump
of black stone, rudely annotated with queer marks and scratches--that is
all that the drawer holds. Here you see is an old envelope with the dark
red stamp of twenty years ago, but I have pencilled a few lines at the
back; here is a sheet of manuscript, and here some cuttings from obscure
local journals. And if you ask me the subject-matter of the collection,
it will not seem extraordinary--a servant-girl at a farmhouse, who
disappeared from her place and has never been heard of, a child supposed
to have slipped down some old working on the mountains, some queer
scribbling on a limestone rock, a man murdered with a blow from a
strange weapon; such is the scent I have to go upon. Yes, as you say,
there is a ready explanation for all this; the girl may have run away to
London, or Liverpool, or New York; the child may be at the bottom of the
disused shaft; and the letters on the rock may be the idle whims of some
vagrant. Yes, yes, I admit all that; but I know I hold the true key.
Look!' and he held out a slip of yellow paper.

_Characters found inscribed on a limestone rock on the Grey Hills_, I
read, and then there was a word erased, presumably the name of a county,
and a date some fifteen years back. Beneath was traced a number of
uncouth characters, shaped somewhat like wedges or daggers, as strange
and outlandish as the Hebrew alphabet.

'Now the seal,' said Professor Gregg, and he handed me the black stone,
a thing about two inches long, and something like an old-fashioned
tobacco-stopper, much enlarged.

I held it up to the light, and saw to my surprise the characters on the
paper repeated on the seal.

'Yes,' said the professor, 'they are the same. And the marks on the
limestone rock were made fifteen years ago, with some red substance. And
the characters on the seal are four thousand years old at least. Perhaps
much more.'

'Is it a hoax?' I said.

'No, I anticipated that. I was not to be led to give my life to a
practical joke. I have tested the matter very carefully. Only one person
besides myself knows of the mere existence of that black seal. Besides,
there are other reasons which I cannot enter into now.'

'But what does it all mean?' I said. 'I cannot understand to what
conclusion all this leads.'

'My dear Miss Lally, that is a question that I would rather leave
unanswered for some little time. Perhaps I shall never be able to say
what secrets are held here in solution; a few vague hints, the outlines
of village tragedies, a few marks done with red earth upon a rock, and
an ancient seal. A queer set of data to go upon? Half a dozen pieces of
evidence, and twenty years before even so much could be got together;
and who knows what mirage or _terra incognita_ may be beyond all this? I
look across deep waters, Miss Lally, and the land beyond may be but a
haze after all. But still I believe it is not so, and a few months will
show whether I am right or wrong.'

He left me, and alone I endeavoured to fathom the mystery, wondering to
what goal such eccentric odds and ends of evidence could lead. I myself
am not wholly devoid of imagination, and I had reason to respect the
professor's solidity of intellect; yet I saw in the contents of the
drawers but the materials of fantasy, and vainly tried to conceive what
theory could be founded on the fragments that had been placed before me.
Indeed, I could discover in what I had heard and seen but the first
chapter of an extravagant romance; and yet deep in my heart I burned
with curiosity, and day after day I looked eagerly in Professor Gregg's
face for some hint of what was to happen.

It was one evening after dinner that the word came.

'I hope you can make your preparations without much trouble,' he said
suddenly to me. 'We shall be leaving here in a week's time.'

'Really!' I said in astonishment. 'Where are we going?'

'I have taken a country house in the west of England, not far from
Caermaen, a quiet little town, once a city, and the headquarters of a
Roman legion. It is very dull there, but the country is pretty, and the
air is wholesome.'

I detected a glint in his eyes, and guessed that this sudden move had
some relation to our conversation of a few days before.

'I shall just take a few books with me,' said Professor Gregg, 'that is
all. Everything else will remain here for our return. I have got a
holiday,' he went on, smiling at me, 'and I shan't be sorry to be quit
for a time of my old bones and stones and rubbish. Do you know,' he went
on, 'I have been grinding away at facts for thirty years; it is time for
fancies.'

The days passed quickly; I could see that the professor was all
quivering with suppressed excitement, and I could scarce credit the
eager appetence of his glance as we left the old manor-house behind us
and began our journey. We set out at midday, and it was in the dusk of
the evening that we arrived at a little country station. I was tired and
excited, and the drive through the lanes seems all a dream. First the
deserted streets of a forgotten village, while I heard Professor Gregg's
voice talking of the Augustan Legion and the clash of arms, and all the
tremendous pomp that followed the eagles; then the broad river swimming
to full tide with the last afterglow glimmering duskily in the yellow
water, the wide meadows, the cornfields whitening, and the deep lane
winding on the slope between the hills and the water. At last we began
to ascend, and the air grew rarer. I looked down and saw the pure white
mist tracking the outline of the river like a shroud, and a vague and
shadowy country; imaginations and fantasy of swelling hills and hanging
woods, and half-shaped outlines of hills beyond, and in the distance the
glare of the furnace fire on the mountain, glowing by turns a pillar of
shining flame and fading to a dull point of red. We were slowly mounting
a carriage drive, and then there came to me the cool breath and the
secret of the great wood that was above us; I seemed to wander in its
deepest depths, and there was the sound of trickling water, the scent of
the green leaves, and the breath of the summer night. The carriage
stopped at last, and I could scarcely distinguish the form of the house,
as I waited a moment at the pillared porch. The rest of the evening
seemed a dream of strange things bounded by the great silence of the
wood and the valley and the river.

The next morning, when I awoke and looked out of the bow window of the
big, old-fashioned bedroom, I saw under a grey sky a country that was
still all mystery. The long, lovely valley, with the river winding in
and out below, crossed in mid-vision by a mediæval bridge of vaulted and
buttressed stone, the clear presence of the rising ground beyond, and
the woods that I had only seen in shadow the night before, seemed tinged
with enchantment, and the soft breath of air that sighed in at the
opened pane was like no other wind. I looked across the valley, and
beyond, hill followed on hill as wave on wave, and here a faint blue
pillar of smoke rose still in the morning air from the chimney of an
ancient grey farmhouse, there was a rugged height crowned with dark
firs, and in the distance I saw the white streak of a road that climbed
and vanished into some unimagined country. But the boundary of all was a
great wall of mountain, vast in the west, and ending like a fortress
with a steep ascent and a domed tumulus clear against the sky.

I saw Professor Gregg walking up and down the terrace path below the
windows, and it was evident that he was revelling in the sense of
liberty, and the thought that he had for a while bidden good-bye to
task-work. When I joined him there was exultation in his voice as he
pointed out the sweep of valley and the river that wound beneath the
lovely hills.

'Yes,' he said, 'it is a strangely beautiful country; and to me, at
least, it seems full of mystery. You have not forgotten the drawer I
showed you, Miss Lally? No; and you have guessed that I have come here
not merely for the sake of the children and the fresh air?'

'I think I have guessed as much as that,' I replied; 'but you must
remember I do not know the mere nature of your investigations; and as
for the connection between the search and this wonderful valley, it is
past my guessing.'

He smiled queerly at me. 'You must not think I am making a mystery for
the sake of mystery,' he said. 'I do not speak out because, so far,
there is nothing to be spoken, nothing definite, I mean, nothing that
can be set down in hard black and white, as dull and sure and
irreproachable as any blue-book. And then I have another reason: Many
years ago a chance paragraph in a newspaper caught my attention, and
focussed in an instant the vagrant thoughts and half-formed fancies of
many idle and speculative hours into a certain hypothesis. I saw at once
that I was treading on a thin crust; my theory was wild and fantastic in
the extreme, and I would not for any consideration have written a hint
of it for publication. But I thought that in the company of scientific
men like myself, men who knew the course of discovery, and were aware
that the gas that blazes and flares in the gin-palace was once a wild
hypothesis--I thought that with such men as these I might hazard my
dream--let us say Atlantis, or the philosopher's stone, or what you
like--without danger of ridicule. I found I was grossly mistaken; my
friends looked blankly at me and at one another, and I could see
something of pity, and something also of insolent contempt, in the
glances they exchanged. One of them called on me next day, and hinted
that I must be suffering from overwork and brain exhaustion. "In plain
terms," I said, "you think I am going mad. I think not"; and I showed
him out with some little appearance of heat. Since that day I vowed that
I would never whisper the nature of my theory to any living soul; to no
one but yourself have I ever shown the contents of that drawer. After
all, I may be following a rainbow; I may have been misled by the play of
coincidence; but as I stand here in this mystic hush and silence, amidst
the woods and wild hills, I am more than ever sure that I am hot on the
scent. Come, it is time we went in.'

To me in all this there was something both of wonder and excitement; I
knew how in his ordinary work Professor Gregg moved step by step,
testing every inch of the way, and never venturing on assertion without
proof that was impregnable. Yet I divined, more from his glance and the
vehemence of his tone than from the spoken word, that he had in his
every thought the vision of the almost incredible continually with him;
and I, who was with some share of imagination no little of a sceptic,
offended at a hint of the marvellous, could not help asking myself
whether he were cherishing a monomania, and barring out from this one
subject all the scientific method of his other life.

Yet, with this image of mystery haunting my thoughts, I surrendered
wholly to the charm of the country. Above the faded house on the
hillside began the great forest--a long, dark line seen from the
opposing hills, stretching above the river for many a mile from north to
south, and yielding in the north to even wilder country, barren and
savage hills, and ragged commonland, a territory all strange and
unvisited, and more unknown to Englishmen than the very heart of Africa.
The space of a couple of steep fields alone separated the house from the
woods, and the children were delighted to follow me up the long alleys
of undergrowth, between smooth pleached walls of shining beech, to the
highest point in the wood, whence one looked on one side across the
river and the rise and fall of the country to the great western mountain
wall, and on the other over the surge and dip of the myriad trees of the
forest, over level meadows and the shining yellow sea to the faint coast
beyond. I used to sit at this point on the warm sunlit turf which marked
the track of the Roman Road, while the two children raced about hunting
for the whinberries that grew here and there on the banks. Here, beneath
the deep blue sky and the great clouds rolling, like olden galleons with
sails full-bellied, from the sea to the hills, as I listened to the
whispered charm of the great and ancient wood, I lived solely for
delight, and only remembered strange things when we would return to the
house and find Professor Gregg either shut up in the little room he had
made his study, or else pacing the terrace with the look, patient and
enthusiastic, of the determined seeker.

One morning, some eight or nine days after our arrival, I looked out of
my window and saw the whole landscape transmuted before me. The clouds
had dipped low and hidden the mountain in the west; a southern wind was
driving the rain in shifting pillars up the valley, and the little
brooklet that burst the hill below the house now raged, a red torrent,
down to the river. We were perforce obliged to keep snug within-doors; and
when I had attended to my pupils, I sat down in the morning-room, where
the ruins of a library still encumbered an old-fashioned bookcase. I had
inspected the shelves once or twice, but their contents had failed to
attract me; volumes of eighteenth-century sermons, an old book on
farriery, a collection of poems by 'persons of quality,' Prideaus's
_Connection_, and an odd volume of Pope, were the boundaries of the
library, and there seemed little doubt that everything of interest or
value had been removed. Now, however, in desperation, I began to
re-examine the musty sheepskin and calf bindings, and found, much to my
delight, a fine old quarto printed by the Stephani, containing the three
books of Pomponius Mela, _De Situ Orbis_, and other of the ancient
geographers. I knew enough of Latin to steer my way through an ordinary
sentence, and I soon became absorbed in the odd mixture of fact and
fancy--light shining on a little of the space of the world, and beyond,
mist and shadow and awful forms. Glancing over the clear-printed pages,
my attention was caught by the heading of a chapter in Solinus, and I
read the words:


MIRA DE INTIMIS GENTIBUS LIBYAE. DE LAPIDE HEXECONTALITHO,


--'The wonders of the people that inhabit the inner parts of Libya, and
of the stone called Sixtystone.'

The odd title attracted me, and I read on:

_Gens ista avia et secreta habitat, in montibus horrendis foeda mysteria
celebrat. De hominibus nihil aliud illi praeferunt quam figuram, ab
humano ritu prorsus exulant, oderunt deum lucis.

Stridunt potius quam loquuntur; vox absona nec sine horrore auditur.
Lapide quodam gloriantur, quem Hexecontalithon vocant; dicunt enim hunc
lapidem sexaginta notas ostendere.

Cujus lapidis nomen secretum ineffabile colunt: quod Ixaxar._

'This folk,' I translated to myself, 'dwells in remote and secret
places, and celebrates foul mysteries on savage hills. Nothing have they
in common with men save the face, and the customs of humanity are wholly
strange to them; and they hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak;
their voices are harsh, and not to be heard without fear. They boast of
a certain stone, which they call Sixtystone; for they say that it
displays sixty characters. And this stone has a secret unspeakable name;
which is Ixaxar.'

I laughed at the queer inconsequence of all this, and thought it fit for
'Sinbad the Sailor,' or other of the supplementary _Nights_. When I saw
Professor Gregg in the course of the day, I told him of my find in the
bookcase, and the fantastic rubbish I had been reading. To my surprise
he looked up at me with an expression of great interest.

'That is really very curious,' he said. 'I have never thought it worth
while to look into the old geographers, and I dare say I have missed a
good deal. Ah, that is the passage, is it? It seems a shame to rob you
of your entertainment, but I really think I must carry off the book.'

The next day the professor called me to come to the study. I found him
sitting at a table in the full light of the window, scrutinizing
something very attentively with a magnifying glass.

'Ah, Miss Lally,' he began, 'I want to use your eyes. This glass is
pretty good, but not like my old one that I left in town. Would you mind
examining the thing yourself, and telling me how many characters are cut
on it?'

He handed me the object in his hand. I saw that it was the black seal he
had shown me in London, and my heart began to beat with the thought that
I was presently to know something. I took the seal, and, holding it up
to the light, checked off the grotesque dagger-shaped characters one by
one.

'I make sixty-two,' I said at last.

'Sixty-two? Nonsense; it's impossible. Ah, I see what you have done, you
have counted that and that,' and he pointed to two marks which I had
certainly taken as letters with the rest.

'Yes, yes,' Professor Gregg went on, 'but those are obviously scratches,
done accidentally; I saw that at once. Yes, then that's quite right.
Thank you very much, Miss Lally.'

I was going away, rather disappointed at my having been called in merely
to count the number of marks on the black seal, when suddenly there
flashed into my mind what I had read in the morning.

'But, Professor Gregg,' I cried, breathless, 'the seal, the seal. Why,
it is the stone Hexecontalithos that Solinus writes of; it is Ixaxar.'

'Yes,' he said, 'I suppose it is. Or it may be a mere coincidence. It
never does to be too sure, you know, in these matters. Coincidence
killed the professor.'

I went away puzzled by what I had heard, and as much as ever at a loss
to find the ruling clue in this maze of strange evidence. For three days
the bad weather lasted, changing from driving rain to a dense mist, fine
and dripping, and we seemed to be shut up in a white cloud that veiled
all the world away from us. All the while Professor Gregg was darkling
in his room, unwilling, it appeared, to dispense confidences or talk of
any kind, and I heard him walking to and fro with a quick, impatient
step, as if he were in some way wearied of inaction. The fourth morning
was fine, and at breakfast the professor said briskly:

'We want some extra help about the house; a boy of fifteen or sixteen,
you know. There are a lot of little odd jobs that take up the maids'
time which a boy could do much better.'

'The girls have not complained to me in any way,' I replied. 'Indeed,
Anne said there was much less work than in London, owing to there being
so little dust;'

'Ah, yes, they are very good girls. But I think we shall do much better
with a boy. In fact, that is what has been bothering me for the last two
days.'

'Bothering you?' I said in astonishment, for as a matter of fact the
professor never took the slightest interest in the affairs of the house.

'Yes,' he said, 'the weather, you know. I really couldn't go out in that
Scotch mist; I don't know the country very well, and I should have lost
my way. But I am going to get the boy this morning.'

'But how do you know there is such a boy as you want anywhere about?'

'Oh, I have no doubt as to that. I may have to walk a mile or two at the
most, but I am sure to find just the boy I require.'

I thought the professor was joking, but, though his tone was airy
enough, there was something grim and set about his features that puzzled
me. He got his stick, and stood at the door looking meditatively before
him, and as I passed through the hall he called to me.

'By the way, Miss Lally, there was one thing I wanted to say to you. I
dare say you may have heard that some of these country lads are not
over-bright; "idiotic" would be a harsh word to use, and they are
usually called "naturals", or something of the kind. I hope you won't
mind if the boy I am after should turn out not too keen-witted; he will
be perfectly harmless, of course, and blacking boots doesn't need much
mental effort.'

With that he was gone, striding up the road that led to the wood, and I
remained stupefied; and then for the first time my astonishment was
mingled with a sudden note of terror, arising I knew not whence, and all
unexplained even to myself, and yet I felt about my heart for an instant
something of the chill of death, and that shapeless, formless dread of
the unknown that is worse than death itself. I tried to find courage in
the sweet air that blew up from the sea, and in the sunlight after rain,
but the mystic woods seemed to darken around me; and the vision of the
river coiling between the reeds, and the silver grey of the ancient
bridge, fashioned in my mind symbols of vague dread, as the mind of a
child fashions terror from things harmless and familiar.

Two hours later Professor Gregg returned. I met him as he came down the
road, and asked quietly if he had been able to find a boy.

'Oh, yes.' he answered; 'I found one easily enough. His name is Jervase
Cradock, and I expect he will make himself very useful. His father has
been dead for many years, and the mother, whom I saw, seemed very glad
at the prospect of a few shillings extra coming in on Saturday nights.
As I expected, he is not too sharp, has fits at times, the mother said;
but as he will not be trusted with the china, that doesn't much matter,
does it? And he is not in any way dangerous, you know, merely a little
weak.'

'When is he coming?'

'To-morrow morning at eight o'clock. Anne will show him what he has to
do, and how to do it. At first he will go home every night, but perhaps
it may ultimately turn out more convenient for him to sleep here, and
only go home for Sundays.'

I found nothing to say to all this; Professor Gregg spoke in a quiet
tone of matter-of-fact, as indeed was warranted by the circumstance; and
yet I could not quell my sensation of astonishment at the whole affair.
I knew that in reality no assistance was wanted in the housework, and
the professor's prediction that the boy he was to engage might prove a
little 'simple,' followed by so exact a fulfilment, struck me as bizarre
in the extreme. The next morning I heard from the housemaid that the boy
Cradock had come at eight, and that she had been trying to make him
useful. 'He doesn't seem quite all there, I don't think, miss,' was her
comment, and later in the day I saw him helping the old man who worked
in the garden. He was a youth of about fourteen, with black hair and
black eyes and an olive skin, and I saw at once from the curious vacancy
of his expression that he was mentally weak. He touched his forehead
awkwardly as I went by, and I heard him answering the gardener in a
queer, harsh voice that caught my attention; it gave me the impression
of some one speaking deep below under the earth, and there was a strange
sibilance, like the hissing of the phonograph as the pointer travels
over the cylinder. I heard that he seemed anxious to do what he could,
and was quite docile and obedient, and Morgan the gardener, who knew his
mother, assured me he was perfectly harmless. 'He's always been a bit
queer,' he said, 'and no wonder, after what his mother went through
before he was born. I did know his father, Thomas Cradock, well, and a
very fine workman he was too, indeed. He got something wrong with his
lungs owing to working in the wet woods, and never got over it, and went
off quite sudden like. And they do say as how Mrs. Cradock was quite off
her head: anyhow, she was found by Mr. Hillyer, Ty Coch, all crouched up
on the Grey Hills, over there, crying and weeping like a lost soul. And
Jervase, he was born about eight months afterwards, and, as I was
saying, he was a bit queer always; and they do say when he could
scarcely walk he would frighten the other children into fits with the
noises he would make.'

A word in the story had stirred up some remembrance within me, and,
vaguely curious, I asked the old man where the Grey Hills were.

'Up there,' he said, with the same gesture he had used before; 'you go
past the "Fox and Hounds", and through the forest, by the old ruins.
It's a good five mile from here, and a strange sort of a place. The
poorest soil between this and Monmouth, they do say, though it's good
feed for sheep. Yes, it was a sad thing for poor Mrs. Cradock.'

The old man turned to his work, and I strolled on down the path between
the espaliers, gnarled and gouty with age, thinking of the story I had
heard, and groping for the point in it that had some key to my memory.
In an instant it came before me; I had seen the phrase 'Grey Hills' on
the slip of yellowed paper that Professor Gregg had taken from the
drawer in his cabinet. Again I was seized with pangs of mingled
curiosity and fear; I remembered the strange characters copied from the
limestone rock, and then again their identity with the inscription of
the age-old seal, and the fantastic fables of the Latin geographer. I
saw beyond doubt that, unless coincidence had set all the scene and
disposed all these bizarre events with curious art, I was to be a
spectator of things far removed from the usual and customary traffic and
jostle of life. Professor Gregg I noted day by day; he was hot on his
trail, growing lean with eagerness; and in the evenings, when the sun
was swimming on the verge of the mountain, he would pace the terrace to
and fro with his eyes on the ground, while the mist grew white in the
valley, and the stillness of the evening brought far voices near, and
the blue smoke rose a straight column from the diamond-shaped chimney of
the grey farmhouse, just as I had seen it on the first morning. I have
told you I was of sceptical habit; but though I understood little or
nothing, I began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the iterated
dogmas of science that all life is material, and that in the system of
things there is no undiscovered land, even beyond the remotest stars,
where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet there struck in on this
the thought that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that
science itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than
a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place.

There is one day that stands up from amidst the others as a grim red
beacon, betokening evil to come. I was sitting on a bench in the garden,
watching the boy Cradock weeding, when I was suddenly alarmed by a harsh
and choking sound, like the cry of a wild beast in anguish, and I was
unspeakably shocked to see the unfortunate lad standing in full view
before me, his whole body quivering and shaking at short intervals as
though shocks of electricity were passing through him, his teeth
grinding, foam gathering on his lips, and his face all swollen and
blackened to a hideous mask of humanity. I shrieked with terror, and
Professor Gregg came running; and as I pointed to Cradock, the boy with
one convulsive shudder fell face forward, and lay on the wet earth, his
body writhing like a wounded blind-worm, and an inconceivable babble of
sounds bursting and rattling and hissing from his lips. He seemed to
pour forth an infamous jargon, with words, or what seemed words, that
might have belonged to a tongue dead since untold ages and buried deep
beneath Nilotic mud, or in the inmost recesses of the Mexican forest.
For a moment the thought passed through my mind, as my ears were still
revolted with that infernal clamour, 'Surely this is the very speech of
hell,' and then I cried out again and again, and ran away shuddering to
my inmost soul. I had seen Professor Gregg's face as he stooped over the
wretched boy and raised him, and I was appalled by the glow of
exultation that shone on every lineament and feature. As I sat in my
room with drawn blinds, and my eyes hidden in my hands, I heard heavy
steps beneath, and I was told afterwards that Professor Gregg had
carried Cradock to his study, and had locked the door. I heard voices
murmur indistinctly, and I trembled to think of what might be passing
within a few feet of where I sat; I longed to escape to the woods and
sunshine, and yet I dreaded the sights that might confront me on the
way; and at last, as I held the handle of the door nervously, I heard
Professor Gregg's voice calling to me with a cheerful ring. 'It's all
right now, Miss Lally,' he said. 'The poor fellow has got over it, and I
have been arranging for him to sleep here after tomorrow. Perhaps I may
be able to do something for him.'

'Yes,' he said later, 'it was a very painful sight, and I don't wonder
you were alarmed. We may hope that good food will build him up a little,
but I am afraid he will never be really cured,' and he affected the
dismal and conventional air with which one speaks of hopeless illness;
and yet beneath it I detected the delight that leapt up rampant within
him, and fought and struggled to find utterance. It was as if one
glanced down on the even surface of the sea, clear and immobile, and saw
beneath raging depths and a storm of contending billows. It was indeed
to me a torturing and offensive problem that this man, who had so
bounteously rescued me from the sharpness of death, and showed himself
in all the relations of life full of benevolence, and pity, and kindly
forethought, should so manifestly be for once on the side of the demons,
and take a ghastly pleasure in the torments of an afflicted fellow
creature. Apart, I struggled with the horned difficulty, and strove to
find the solution; but without the hint of a clue, beset by mystery and
contradiction. I saw nothing that might help me, and began to wonder
whether, after all, I had not escaped from the white mist of the suburb
at too dear a rate. I hinted something of my thought to the professor; I
said enough to let him know that I was in the most acute perplexity, but
the moment after regretted what I had done when I saw his face contort
with a spasm of pain.

'My dear Miss Lally,' he said, 'you surely do not wish to leave us? No,
no, you would not do it. You do not know how I rely on you; how
confidently I go forward, assured that you are here to watch over my
children. You, Miss Lally, are my rear-guard; for let me tell you the
business in which I am engaged is not wholly devoid of peril. You have
not forgotten what I said the first morning here; my lips are shut by an
old and firm resolve till they can open to utter no ingenious hypothesis
or vague surmise, but irrefragable fact, as certain as a demonstration
in mathematics. Think over it, Miss Lally; not for a moment would I
endeavour to keep you here against your own instincts, and yet I tell
you frankly that I am persuaded it is here, here amidst the woods, that
your duty lies.'

I was touched by the eloquence of his tone, and by the remembrance that
the man, after all, had been my salvation, and I gave him my hand on a
promise to serve him loyally and without question. A few days later the
rector of our church--a little church, grey and severe and quaint, that
hovered on the very banks of the river and watched the tides swim and
return--came to see us, and Professor Gregg easily persuaded him to stay
and share our dinner. Mr. Meyrick was a member of an antique family of
squires, whose old manor-house stood amongst the hills some seven miles
away, and thus rooted in the soil, the rector was a living store of all
the old fading customs and lore of the country. His manner, genial, with
a deal of retired oddity, won on Professor Gregg; and towards the
cheese, when a curious Burgundy had begun its incantations, the two men
glowed like the wine, and talked of philology with the enthusiasm of a
burgess over the peerage. The parson was expounding the pronunciation of
the Welsh _ll_, and producing sounds like the gurgle of his native
brooks, when Professor Gregg struck in.

'By the way,' he said, 'that was a very odd word I met with the other
day. You know my boy, poor Jervase Cradock? Well, he has got the bad
habit of talking to himself, and the day before yesterday I was walking
in the garden here and heard him; he was evidently quite unconscious of
my presence. A lot of what he said I couldn't make out, but one word
struck me distinctly. It was such an odd sound, half sibilant, half
guttural, and as quaint as those double _l_'s you have been
demonstrating. I do not know whether I can give you an idea of the
sound; 'Ishakshar' is perhaps as near as I can get. But the _k_ ought to
be a Greek _chi_ or a Spanish _j_. Now what does it mean in Welsh?'

'In Welsh?' said the parson. 'There is no such word in Welsh, nor any
word remotely resembling it. I know the book-Welsh, as they call it, and
the colloquial dialects as well as any man, but there's no word like
that from Anglesea to Usk. Besides, none of the Cradocks speak a word of
Welsh; it's dying out about here.'

'Really. You interest me extremely, Mr. Meyrick. I confess the word
didn't strike me as having the Welsh ring. But I thought it might be
some local corruption.'

'No, I never heard such a word, or anything like it. Indeed,' he added,
smiling whimsically, 'if it belongs to any language, I should say it
must be that of the fairies--the Tylwydd Têg, as we call them.'

The talk went on to the discovery of a Roman villa in the neighbourhood;
and soon after I left the room, and sat down apart to wonder at the
drawing together of such strange clues of evidence. As the professor had
spoken of the curious word, I had caught the glint in his eye upon me;
and though the pronunciation he gave was grotesque in the extreme, I
recognized the name of the stone of sixty characters mentioned by
Solinus, the black seal shut up in some secret drawer of the study,
stamped for ever by a vanished race with signs that no man could read,
signs that might, for all I knew, be the veils of awful things done long
ago, and forgotten before the hills were moulded into form.

When the next morning I came down, I found Professor Gregg pacing the
terrace in his eternal walk.

'Look at that bridge,' he said, when he saw me; 'observe the quaint and
Gothic design, the angles between the arches, and the silvery grey of
the stone in the awe of the morning light. I confess it seems to me
symbolic; it should illustrate a mystical allegory of the passage from
one world to another.'

'Professor Gregg,' I said quietly, 'it is time that I knew something of
what has happened, and of what is to happen.'

For the moment he put me off, but I returned again with the same
question in the evening, and then Professor Gregg flamed with
excitement. 'Don't you understand yet?' he cried. 'But I have told you a
good deal; yes, and shown you a good deal; you have heard pretty nearly
all that I have heard, and seen what I have seen; or at least,' and his
voice chilled as he spoke, 'enough to make a good deal clear as noonday.
The servants told you, I have no doubt, that the wretched boy Cradock
had another seizure the night before last; he awoke me with cries in
that voice you heard in the garden, and I went to him, and God forbid
you should see what I saw that night. But all this is useless; my time
here is drawing to a close; I must be back in town in three weeks, as I
have a course of lectures to prepare, and need all my books about me. In
a very few days it will be all over, and I shall no longer hint, and no
longer be liable to ridicule as a madman and a quack. No, I shall speak
plainly, and I shall be heard with such emotions as perhaps no other man
has ever drawn from the breasts of his fellows.'

He paused, and seemed to grow radiant with the joy of great and
wonderful discovery.

'But all that is for the future, the near future certainly, but still
the future,' he went on at length. 'There is something to be done yet;
you will remember my telling you that my researches were not altogether
devoid of peril? Yes, there, is a certain amount of danger to be faced;
I did not know how much when I spoke on the subject before, and to a
certain extent I am still in the dark. But it will be a strange
adventure, the last of all, the last demonstration in the chain.'

He was walking up and down the room as he spoke, and I could hear in his
voice the contending tones of exultation and despondence, or perhaps I
should say awe, the awe of a man who goes forth on unknown waters, and I
thought of his allusion to Columbus on the night he had laid his book
before me. The evening was a little chilly, and a fire of logs had been
lighted in the study where we were; the remittent flame and the glow on
the walls reminded me of the old days. I was sitting silent in an
armchair by the fire, wondering over all I had heard, and still vainly
speculating as to the secret springs concealed from me under all the
phantasmagoria I had witnessed, when I became suddenly aware of a
sensation that change of some sort had been at work in the room, and
that there was something unfamiliar in its aspect. For some time I
looked about me, trying in vain to localize the alteration that I knew
had been made; the table by the window, the chairs, the faded settee
were all as I had known them. Suddenly, as a sought-for recollection
flashes into the mind, I knew what was amiss. I was facing the
professor's desk, which stood on the other side of the fire, and above
the desk was a grimy-looking bust of Pitt, that I had never seen there
before. And then I remembered the true position of this work of art; in
the furthest corner by the door was an old cupboard, projecting into the
room, and on the top of the cupboard, fifteen feet from the floor, the
bust had been, and there, no doubt, it had delayed, accumulating dirt,
since the early days of the century.

I was utterly amazed, and sat silent, still in a confusion of thought.
There was, so far as I knew, no such thing as a stepladder in the house,
for I had asked for one to make some alteration in the curtains of my
room, and a tall man standing on a chair would have found it impossible
to take down the bust. It had been placed, not on the edge of the
cupboard, but far back against the wall; and Professor Gregg was, if
anything, under the average height.

'How on earth did you manage to get down Pitt?' I said at last.

The professor looked curiously at me, and seemed to hesitate a little.

'They must have found you a step-ladder, or perhaps the gardener brought
in a short ladder from outside?'

'No, I have had no ladder of any kind. Now, Miss Lally,' he went on with
an awkward simulation of jest, 'there is a little puzzle for you; a
problem in the manner of the inimitable Holmes; there are the facts,
plain and patent: summon your acuteness to the solution of the puzzle.
For Heaven's sake,' he cried with a breaking voice, 'say no more about
it! I tell you, I never touched the thing,' and he went out of the room
with horror manifest on his face, and his hand shook and jarred the door
behind him.

I looked round the room in vague surprise, not at all realizing what had
happened, making vain and idle surmises by way of explanation, and
wondering at the stirring of black waters by an idle word and the
trivial change of an ornament. 'This is some petty business, some whim
on which I have jarred.' I reflected; 'the professor is perhaps
scrupulous and superstitious over trifles, and my question may have
outraged unacknowledged fears, as though one killed a spider or spilled
the salt before the very eyes of a practical Scotchwoman.' I was
immersed in these fond suspicions, and began to plume myself a little on
my immunity from such empty fears, when the truth fell heavily as lead
upon my heart, and I recognized with cold terror that some awful
influence had been at work. The bust was simply inaccessible; without a
ladder no one could have touched it.

I went out to the kitchen and spoke as quietly as I could to the
housemaid.

'Who moved that bust from the top of the cupboard, Anne?' I said to her.
'Professor Gregg says he has not touched it. Did you find an old
step-ladder in one of the outhouses?'

The girl looked at me blankly.

'I never touched it,' she said. 'I found it where it is now the other
morning when I dusted the room. I remember now, it was Wednesday
morning, because it was the morning after Cradock was taken bad in the
night. My room is next to his, you know, miss,' the girl went on
piteously, 'and it was awful to hear how he cried and called out names
that I couldn't understand. It made me feel all afraid; and then master
came, and I heard him speak, and he took down Cradock to the study and
gave him something.'

'And you found that bust moved the next morning?'

'Yes, miss. There was a queer sort of smell in the study when I came
down and opened the windows; a bad smell it was, and I wondered what it
could be. Do you know, miss, I went a long time ago to the Zoo in London
with my cousin Thomas Barker, one afternoon that I had off, when I was
at Mrs. Prince's in Stanhope Gate, and we went into the snake-house to
see the snakes, and it was just the same sort of smell; very sick it
made me feel, I remember, and I got Barker to take me out. And it was
just the same kind of smell in the study, as I was saying, and I was
wondering what it could be from, when I see that bust with Pitt cut in
it, standing on the master's desk, and I thought to myself, 'Now who has
done that, and how have they done it'?' And when I came to dust the
things, I looked at the bust, and I saw a great mark on it where the
dust was gone, for I don't think it can have been touched with a duster
for years and years, and it wasn't like finger-marks, but a large patch
like, broad and spread out. So I passed my hand over it, without
thinking what I was doing, and where that patch was it was all sticky
and slimy, as if a snail had crawled over it. Very strange, isn't it,
miss? and I wonder who can have done it, and how that mess was made.'

The well-meant gabble of the servant touched me to the quick; I lay down
upon my bed, and bit my lip that I should not cry out loud in the sharp
anguish of my terror and bewilderment. Indeed, I was almost mad with
dread; I believe that if it had been daylight I should have fled hot
foot, forgetting all courage and all the debt of gratitude that was due
to Professor Gregg, not caring whether my fate were that I must starve
slowly, so long as I might escape from the net of blind and panic fear
that every day seemed to draw a little closer round me. If I knew, I
thought, if I knew what there was to dread, I could guard against it;
but here, in this lonely house, shut in on all sides by the olden woods
and the vaulted hills, terror seems to spring inconsequent from every
covert, and the flesh is aghast at the half-hearted murmurs of horrible
things. All in vain I strove to summon scepticism to my aid, and
endeavoured by cool common sense to buttress my belief in a world of
natural order, for the air that blew in at the open window was a mystic
breath, and in the darkness I felt the silence go heavy and sorrowful as
a mass of requiem, and I conjured images of strange shapes gathering
fast amidst the reeds, beside the wash of the river.

In the morning from the moment that I set foot in the breakfast-room, I
felt that the unknown plot was drawing to a crisis; the professor's face
was firm and set, and he seemed hardly to hear our voices when we spoke.

'I am going out for a rather long walk,' he said, when the meal was
over. 'You mustn't be expecting me, now, or thinking anything has
happened if I don't turn up to dinner. I have been getting stupid
lately, and I dare say a miniature walking tour will do me good. Perhaps
I may even spend the night in some little inn, if I find any place that
looks clean and comfortable.'

I heard this, and knew by my experience of Professor Gregg's manner that
it was no ordinary business of pleasure that impelled him. I knew not,
nor even remotely guessed, where he was bound, nor had I the vaguest
notion of his errand, but all the fear of the night before returned; and
as he stood, smiling, on the terrace, ready to set out, I implored him
to stay, and to forget all his dreams of the undiscovered continent.

'No, no, Miss Lally,' he replied, still smiling, 'it's too late now.
_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_, you know, is the device of all true
explorers, though I hope it won't be literally true in my case. But,
indeed, you are wrong to alarm yourself so; I look upon my little
expedition as quite commonplace; no more exciting than a day with the
geological hammers. There is a risk, of course, but so there is on the
commonest excursion. I can afford to be jaunty; I am doing nothing so
hazardous as 'Arry does a hundred times over in the course of every Bank
Holiday. Well, then, you must look more cheerfully; and so good-bye till
tomorrow at latest.'

He walked briskly up the road, and I saw him open the gate that marks
the entrance of the wood, and then he vanished in the gloom of the
trees.

All the day passed heavily with a strange darkness in the air, and again
I felt as if imprisoned amidst the ancient woods, shut in an olden land
of mystery and dread, and as if all was long ago and forgotten by the
living outside. I hoped and dreaded; and when the dinner-hour came I
waited, expecting to hear the professor's step in the hall, and his
voice exulting at I knew not what triumph. I composed my face to welcome
him gladly, but the night descended dark, and he did not come.

In the morning, when the maid knocked at my door, I called out to her,
and asked if her master had returned; and when she replied that his
bedroom door stood open and empty, I felt the cold clasp of despair.
Still, I fancied he might have discovered genial company, and would
return for luncheon, or perhaps in the afternoon, and I took the
children for a walk in the forest, and tried my best to play and laugh
with them, and to shut out the thoughts of mystery and veiled terror.

Hour after hour I waited, and my thoughts grew darker; again the night
came and found me watching, and at last, as I was making much ado to
finish my dinner, I heard steps outside and the sound of a man's voice.

The maid came in and looked oddly at me. 'Please, miss,' she began, 'Mr.
Morgan, the gardener, wants to speak to you for a minute, if you didn't
mind.'

'Show him in, please,' I answered, and set my lips tight.

The old man came slowly into the room, and the servant shut the door
behind him.

'Sit down, Mr. Morgan,' I said; 'what is it that you want to say to me?'

'Well, miss, Mr. Gregg he gave me something for you yesterday morning,
just before he went off, and he told me particular not to hand it up
before eight o'clock this evening exactly, if so be as he wasn't back
again home before, and if he should come home before I was just to
return it to him in his own hands. So, you see, as Mr. Gregg isn't here
yet, I suppose I'd better give you the parcel directly.'

He pulled out something from his pocket, and gave it to me, half rising.
I took it silently, and seeing that Morgan seemed doubtful as to what he
was to do next. I thanked him and bade him good night, and he went out.
I was left alone in the room with the parcel in my hand--a paper parcel,
neatly sealed and directed to me, with the instructions Morgan had
quoted, all written in the professor's large, loose hand. I broke the
seals with a choking at my heart, and found an envelope inside,
addressed also, but open, and I took the letter out.

_My dear Miss Lally_ it began--_To quote the old logic manual, the case
of your reading this note is a case of my having made a blunder of some
sort, and, I am afraid, a blunder that turns these lines into a
farewell. It is practically certain that neither you nor any one else
will ever see me again. I have made my will with provision for this
eventuality, and I hope you will consent to accept the small remembrance
addressed to you, and my sincere thanks for the way in which you joined
your fortunes to mine. The fate which has come upon me is desperate and
terrible beyond the remotest dreams of man; but this fate you have a
right to know--if you please. If you look in the left-hand drawer of my
dressing-table, you will find the key of the escritoire, properly
labelled. In the well of the escritoire is a large envelope sealed and
addressed to your name. I advise you to throw it forthwith into the
fire; you will sleep better of nights if you do so. But if you must know
the history of what has happened, it is all written down for you to
read._

The signature was firmly written below, and again I turned the page and
read out the words one by one, aghast and white to the lips, my hands
cold as ice, and sickness choking me. The dead silence of the room, and
the thought of the dark woods and hills closing me in on every side,
oppressed me, helpless and without capacity, and not knowing where to
turn for counsel. At last I resolved that though knowledge should haunt
my whole life and all the days to come, I must know the meaning of the
strange terrors that had so long tormented me, rising grey, dim, and
awful, like the shadows in the wood at dusk. I carefully carried out
Professor Gregg's directions, and not without reluctance broke the seal
of the envelope, and spread out his manuscript before me. That
manuscript I always carry with me, and I see that I cannot deny your
unspoken request to read it. This, then, was what I read that night,
sitting at the desk, with a shaded lamp beside me.

The young lady who called herself Miss Lally then proceeded to recite




THE STATEMENT OF WILLIAM GREGG. F.R.S., etc.


It is many years since the first glimmer of the theory which is now
almost, if not quite, reduced to fact dawned on my mind. A somewhat
extensive course of miscellaneous and obsolete reading had done a great
deal to prepare the way, and, later, when I became somewhat of a
specialist, and immersed myself in the studies known as ethnological, I
was now and then startled by facts that would not square with orthodox
scientific opinion, and by discoveries that seemed to hint at something
still hidden for all our research. More particularly I became convinced
that much of the folk-lore of the world is but an exaggerated account of
events that really happened, and I was especially drawn to consider the
stories of the fairies, the good folk of the Celtic races. Here, I
thought I could detect the fringe of embroidery and exaggeration, the
fantastic guise, the little people dressed in green and gold sporting in
the flowers, and I thought I saw a distinct analogy between the name
given to this race (supposed to be imaginary) and the description of
their appearance and manners. Just as our remote ancestors called the
dreaded beings 'fair' and 'good' precisely because they dreaded them, so
they had dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the truth to be the
very reverse. Literature, too, had gone early to work, and had lent a
powerful hand in the transformation, so that the playful elves of
Shakespere are already far removed from the true original, and the real
horror is disguised in a form of prankish mischief. But in the older
tales, the stories that used to make men cross themselves as they sat
around the burning logs, we tread a different stage; I saw a widely
opposed spirit in certain histories of children and of men and women who
vanished strangely from the earth. They would be seen by a peasant in
the fields walking towards some green and rounded hillock, and seen no
more on earth; and there are stories of mothers who have left a child
quietly sleeping, with the cottage door rudely barred with a piece of
wood, and have returned, not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon,
but a thin and wizened creature, with sallow skin and black, piercing
eyes, the child of another race. Then, again, there were myths darker
still; the dread of witch and wizard, the lurid evil of the Sabbath, and
the hint of demons who mingled with the daughters of men. And just as we
have turned the terrible 'fair folk' into a company of benignant, if
freakish elves, so we have hidden from us the black foulness of the
witch and her companions under a popular _diablerie_ of old women and
broomsticks, and a comic cat with tail on end. So the Greeks called the
hideous furies benevolent ladies, and thus the northern nations have
followed their example. I pursued my investigations, stealing odd hours
from other and more imperative labours, and I asked myself the question:
Supposing these traditions to be true, who were the demons who are
reported to have attended the Sabbaths? I need not say that I laid aside
what I may call the supernatural hypothesis of the Middle Ages, and came
to the conclusion that fairies and devils were of one and the same race
and origin; invention, no doubt, and the Gothic fancy of old days, had
done much in the way of exaggeration and distortion; yet I firmly
believe that beneath all this imagery there was a black background of
truth. As for some of the alleged wonders, I hesitated. While I should
be very loath to receive any one specific instance of modern
spiritualism as containing even a grain of the genuine, yet I was not
wholly prepared to deny that human flesh may now and then, once perhaps
in ten millions cases, be the veil of powers which seem magical to
us--powers which, so far from proceeding from the heights and leading
men thither, are in reality survivals from the depths of being. The
amoeba and the snail have powers which we do not possess; and I thought
it possible that the theory of reversion might explain many things which
seem wholly inexplicable. Thus stood my position; I saw good reason to
believe that much of the tradition, a vast deal of the earliest and
uncorrupted tradition of the so-called fairies, represented solid fact,
and I thought that the purely supernatural element in these traditions
was to be accounted for on the hypothesis that a race which had fallen
out of the grand march of evolution might have retained, as a survival,
certain powers which would be to us wholly miraculous. Such was my
theory as it stood conceived in my mind; and working with this in view,
I seemed to gather confirmation from every side, from the spoils of a
tumulus or a barrow, from a local paper reporting an antiquarian meeting
in the country, and from general literature of all kinds. Amongst other
instances, I remember being struck by the phrase 'articulate-speaking
men' in Homer, as if the writer knew or had heard of men whose speech
was so rude that it could hardly be termed articulate; and on my
hypothesis of a race who had lagged far behind the rest, I could easily
conceive that such a folk would speak a jargon but little removed from
the inarticulate noises of brute beasts.

Thus I stood, satisfied that my conjecture was at all events not far
removed from fact, when a chance paragraph in a small country print one
day arrested my attention. It was a short account of what was to all
appearance the usual sordid tragedy of the village--a young girl
unaccountably missing, and evil rumour blatant and busy with her
reputation. Yet I could read between the lines that all this scandal was
purely hypothetical, and in all probability invented to account for what
was in any other manner unaccountable. A flight to London or Liverpool,
or an undiscovered body lying with a weight about its neck in the foul
depths of a woodland pool, or perhaps murder--such were the theories of
the wretched girl's neighbours. But as I idly scanned the paragraph, a
flash of thought passed through me with the violence of an electric
shock: what if the obscure and horrible race of the hills still
survived, still remained haunting wild places and barren hills, and now
and then repeating the evil of Gothic legend, unchanged and unchangeable
as the Turanian Shelta, or the Basques of Spain? I have said that the
thought came with violence; and indeed I drew in my breath sharply, and
clung with both hands to my elbow-chair, in a strange confusion of
horror and elation. It was as if one of my _confrères_ of physical
science, roaming in a quiet English wood, had been suddenly stricken
aghast by the presence of the slimy and loathsome terror of the
ichthyosaurus, the original of the stories of the awful worms killed by
valourous knights, or had seen the sun darkened by the pterodactyl, the
dragon of tradition. Yet as a resolute explorer of knowledge, the
thought of such a discovery threw me into a passion of joy, and I cut
out the slip from the paper and put it in a drawer in my old bureau,
resolved that it should be but the first piece in a collection of the
strangest significance. I sat long that evening dreaming of the
conclusions I should establish, nor did cooler reflection at first dash
my confidence. Yet as I began to put the case fairly, I saw that I might
be building on an unstable foundation; the facts might possibly be in
accordance with local opinion, and I regarded the affair with a mood of
some reserve. Yet I resolved to remain perched on the look-out, and I
hugged to myself the thought that I alone was watching and wakeful,
while the great crowd of thinkers and searchers stood heedless and
indifferent, perhaps letting the most prerogative facts pass by
unnoticed.

Several years elapsed before I was enabled to add to the contents of the
drawer; and the second find was in reality not a valuable one, for it
was a mere repetition of the first, with only the variation of another
and distant locality. Yet I gained something; for in the second case, as
in the first, the tragedy took place in a desolate and lonely country,
and so far my theory seemed justified. But the third piece was to me far
more decisive. Again, amongst outland hills, far even from a main road
of traffic, an old man was found done to death, and the instrument of
execution was left beside him. Here, indeed, there were rumour and
conjecture, for the deadly tool was a primitive stone axe, bound by gut
to the wooden handle, and surmises the most extravagant and improbable
were indulged in. Yet, as I thought with a kind of glee, the wildest
conjectures went far astray; and I took the pains to enter into
correspondence with the local doctor, who was called at the inquest. He,
a man of some acuteness, was dumbfounded. 'It will not do to speak of
these things in country places,' he wrote to me; 'but frankly, there is
some hideous mystery here. I have obtained possession of the stone axe,
and have been so curious as to test its powers. I took it into the back
garden of my house one Sunday afternoon when my family and the servants
were all out, and there, sheltered by the poplar hedges, I made my
experiments. I found the thing utterly unmanageable; whether there is
some peculiar balance, some nice adjustment of weights, which require
incessant practice, or whether an effectual blow can be struck only by a
certain trick of the muscles, I do not know; but I can assure you that I
went into the house with but a sorry opinion of my athletic capacities.
I was like an inexperienced man trying "putting the hammer"; the force
exerted seemed to return on oneself, and I found myself hurled backwards
with violence, while the axe fell harmless to the ground. On another
occasion I tried the experiment with a clever woodman of the place; but
this man, who had handled his axe for forty years, could do nothing with
the stone implement, and missed every stroke most ludicrously. In short,
if it were not so supremely absurd, I should say that for four thousand
years no one on earth could have struck an effective blow with the tool
that undoubtedly was used to murder the old man.' This, as may be
imagined, was to me rare news; and afterwards, when I heard the whole
story, and learned that the unfortunate old man had babbled tales of
what might be seen at night on a certain wild hillside, hinting at
unheard-of wonders, and that he had been found cold one morning on the
very hill in question, my exultation was extreme, for I felt I was
leaving conjecture far behind me. But the next step was of still greater
importance. I had possessed for many years an extraordinary stone
seal--a piece of dull black stone, two inches long from the handle to
the stamp, and the stamping end a rough hexagon an inch and a quarter in
diameter. Altogether, it presented the appearance of an enlarged tobacco
stopper of an old-fashioned make. It had been sent to me by an agent in
the East, who informed me that it had been found near the site of the
ancient Babylon. But the characters engraved on the seal were to me an
intolerable puzzle. Somewhat of the cuneiform pattern, there were yet
striking differences, which I detected at the first glance, and all
efforts to read the inscription on the hypothesis that the rules for
deciphering the arrow-headed writing would apply proved futile. A riddle
such as this stung my pride, and at odd moments I would take the Black
Seal out of the cabinet, and scrutinize it with so much idle
perseverance that every letter was familiar to my mind, and I could have
drawn the inscription from memory without the slightest error. Judge,
then, of my surprise when I one day received from a correspondent in the
west of England a letter and an enclosure that positively left me
thunderstruck. I saw carefully traced on a large piece of paper the very
characters of the Black Seal, without alteration of any kind, and above
the inscription my friend had written: _Inscription found on a limestone
rock on the Grey Hills, Monmouthshire. Done in some red earth, and quite
recent._ I turned to the letter. My friend wrote: 'I send you the
enclosed inscription with all due reserve. A shepherd who passed by the
stone a week ago swears that there was then no mark of any kind. The
characters, as I have noted, are formed by drawing some red earth over
the stone, and are of an average height of one inch. They look to me
like a kind of cuneiform character, a good deal altered, but this, of
course, is impossible. It may be either a hoax, or more probably some
scribble of the gipsies, who are plentiful enough in this wild country.
They have, as you are aware, many heiroglyphics which they use in
communicating with one another. I happened to visit the stone in
question two days ago in connection with a rather painful incident which
has occurred here.'

As it may be supposed, I wrote immediately to my friends, thanking him
for the copy of the inscription, and asking him in a casual manner the
history of the incident he mentioned. To be brief, I heard that a woman
named Cradock, who had lost her husband a day before, had set out to
communicate the sad news to a cousin who lived some five miles away. She
took a short cut which led by the Grey Hills. Mrs. Cradock, who was then
quite a young woman, never arrived at her relative's house. Late that
night a farmer, who had lost a couple of sheep, supposed to have
wandered from the flock, was walking over the Grey Hills, with a lantern
and his dog. His attention was attracted by a noise, which he described
as a kind of wailing, mournful and pitiable to hear; and, guided by the
sound, he found the unfortunate Mrs. Cradock crouched on the ground by
the limestone rock, swaying her body to and fro, and lamenting and
crying in so heart-rending a manner that the farmer was, as he says, at
first obliged to stop his ears, or he would have run away. The woman
allowed herself to be taken home, and a neighbour came to see to her
necessities. All the night she never ceased her crying, mixing her
lament with words of some unintelligible jargon, and when the doctor
arrived he pronounced her insane. She lay on her bed for a week, now
wailing, as people said, like one lost and damned for eternity, and now
sunk in a heavy coma; it was thought that grief at the loss of her
husband had unsettled her mind, and the medical man did not at one time
expect her to live. I need not say that I was deeply interested in this
story, and I made my friend write to me at intervals with all the
particulars of the case. I heard then that in the course of six weeks
the woman gradually recovered the use of her faculties, and some months
later she gave birth to a son, christened Jervase, who unhappily proved
to be of weak intellect. Such were the facts known to the village; but
to me, while I whitened at the suggested thought of the hideous
enormities that had doubtless been committed, all this was nothing short
of conviction, and I incautiously hazarded a hint of something like the
truth to some scientific friends. The moment the words had left my lips
I bitterly regretted having spoken, and thus given away the great secret
of my life, but with a good deal of relief mixed with indignation I
found my fears altogether misplaced, for my friends ridiculed me to my
face, and I was regarded as a madman; and beneath a natural anger I
chuckled to myself, feeling as secure amidst these blockheads as if I
had confided what I knew to the desert sands.

But now, knowing so much, I resolved I would know all, and I
concentrated my efforts on the task of deciphering the inscription on
the Black Seal. For many years I made this puzzle the sole object of my
leisure moments, for the greater portion of my time was, of course,
devoted to other duties, and it was only now and then that I could
snatch a week of clear research. If I were to tell the full history of
this curious investigation, this statement would be wearisome in the
extreme, for it would contain simply the account of long and tedious
failure. But with what I knew already of ancient scripts I was well equipped
for the chase, as I always termed it to myself. I had correspondents
amongst all the scientific men in Europe, and, indeed, in the world, and
I could not believe that in these days any character, however ancient
and however perplexed, could long resist the search-light I should bring
to bear upon it. Yet in point of fact, it was fully fourteen years
before I succeeded. With every year my professional duties increased and
my leisure became smaller. This no doubt retarded me a good deal; and
yet, when I look back on those years, I am astonished at the vast scope
of my investigation of the Black Seal. I made my bureau a centre, and
from all the world and from all the ages I gathered transcripts of
ancient writing.

Nothing, I resolved, should pass me unawares, and the faintest hint
should be welcomed and followed up. But as one covert after another was
tried and proved empty of result, I began in the course of years to
despair, and to wonder whether the Black Seal were the sole relic of
some race that had vanished from the world, and left no other trace of
its existence--had perished, in fine, as Atlantis is said to have done,
in some great cataclysm, its secrets perhaps drowned beneath the ocean
or moulded into the heart of the hills. The thought chilled my warmth a
little, and though I still persevered, it was no longer with the same
certainty of faith. A chance came to the rescue. I was staying in a
considerable town in the north of England, and took the opportunity of
going over the very creditable museum that had for some time been
established in the place. The curator was one of my correspondents; and,
as we were looking through one of the mineral cases, my attention was
struck by a specimen, a piece of black stone some four inches square,
the appearance of which reminded me in a measure of the Black Seal. I
took it up carelessly, and was turning it over in my hand, when I saw,
to my astonishment, that the under side was inscribed. I said, quietly
enough, to my friend the curator that the specimen interested me, and
that I should be much obliged if he would allow me to take it with me to
my hotel for a couple of days. He, of course, made no objection, and I
hurried to my rooms and found that my first glance had not deceived me.
There were two inscriptions; one in the regular cuneiform character,
another in the character of the Black Seal, and I realized that my task
was accomplished. I made an exact copy of the two inscriptions; and when
I got to my London study, and had the seal before me, I was able
seriously to grapple with the great problem. The interpreting
inscription on the museum specimen, though in itself curious enough, did
not bear on my quest, but the transliteration made me master of the
secret of the Black Seal. Conjucture, of course, had to enter into my
calculations; there was here and there uncertainty about a particular
ideograph, and one sign recurring again and again on the seal baffled me
for many successive nights. But at last the secret stood open before me
in plain English, and I read the key of the awful transmutation of the
hills. The last word was hardly written, when with fingers all trembling
and unsteady I tore the scrap of paper into the minutest fragments, and
saw them flame and blacken in the red hollow of the fire, and then I
crushed the grey films that remained into finest powder. Never since
then have I written those words; never will I write the phrases which
tell how man can be reduced to the slime from which he came, and be
forced to put on the flesh of the reptile and the snake.

There was now but one thing remaining. I knew, but I desired to see, and
I was after some time able to take a house in the neighbourhood of the
Grey Hills, and not far from the cottage where Mrs. Cradock and her son
Jervase resided. I need not go into a full and detailed account of the
apparently inexplicable events which have occurred here, where I am
writing this. I knew that I should find in Jervase Cradock something of
the blood of the 'Little People,' and I found later that he had more
than once encountered his kinsmen in lonely places in that lonely land.
When I was summoned one day to the garden, and found him in a seizure
speaking or hissing the ghastly jargon of the Black Seal, I am afraid
that exultation prevailed over pity. I heard bursting from his lips the
secrets of the underworld, and the word of dread, 'Ishakshar,'
signification of which I must be excused from giving.

But there is one incident I cannot pass over unnoticed. In the waste
hollow of the night I awoke at the sound of those hissing syllables I
knew so well; and on going to the wretched boy's room, I found him
convulsed and foaming at the mouth, struggling on the bed as if he
strove to escape the grasp of writhing demons. I took him down to my
room and lit the lamp, while he lay twisting on the floor, calling on
the power within his flesh to leave him. I saw his body swell and become
distended as a bladder, while the face blackened before my eyes; and
then at the crisis I did what was necessary according to the directions
on the Seal, and putting all scruple on one side, I became a man of
science, observant of what was passing. Yet the sight I had to witness
was horrible, almost beyond the power of human conception and the most
fearful fantasy. Something pushed out from the body there on the floor,
and stretched forth a slimy, wavering tentacle, across the room, grasped
the bust upon the cupboard, and laid it down on my desk.

When it was over, and I was left to walk up and down all the rest of the
night, white and shuddering, with sweat pouring from my flesh, I vainly
tried to reason within myself: I said, truly enough, that I had seen
nothing really supernatural, that a snail pushing out his horns and
drawing them in was but an instance on a smaller scale of what I had
witnessed; and yet horror broke through all such reasonings and left me
shattered and loathing myself for the share I had taken in the night's
work.

There is little more to be said. I am going now to the final trial and
encounter; for I have determined that there shall be nothing wanting,
and I shall meet the 'Little People' face to face. I shall have the
Black Seal and the knowledge of its secrets to help me, and if I
unhappily do not return from my journey, there is no need to conjure up
here a picture of the awfulness of my fate.


Pausing a little at the end of Professor Gregg's statement, Miss Lally
continued her tale in the following words:


Such was the almost incredible story that the professor had left behind
him. When I had finished reading it, it was late at night, but the next
morning I took Morgan with me, and we proceeded to search the Grey Hills
for some trace of the lost professor. I will not weary you with a
description of the savage desolation of that tract of country, a tract
of utterest loneliness, of bare green hills dotted over with grey
limestone boulders, worn by the ravages of time into fantastic
semblances of men and beast. Finally, after many hours of weary
searching, we found what I told you--the watch and chain, and purse, and
the ring--wrapped in a piece of coarse parchment. When Morgan cut the
gut that bound the parcel together, and I saw the professor's property,
I burst into tears, but the sight of the dreaded characters of the Black
Seal repeated on the parchment froze me to silent horror, and I think I
understood for the first time the awful fate that had come upon my late
employer.

I have only to add that Professor Gregg's lawyer treated my account of
what had happened as a fairy tale, and refused even to glance at the
documents I laid before him. It was he who was responsible for the
statement that appeared in the public press, to the effect that
Professor Gregg had been drowned, and that his body must have been swept
into the open sea.

Miss Lally stopped speaking, and looked at Mr. Phillipps, with a glance
of some inquiry. He, for his part, was sunken in a deep reverie of
thought; and when he looked up and saw the bustle of the evening
gathering in the square, men and women hurrying to partake of dinner,
and crowds already besetting the music-halls, all the hum and press of
actual life seemed unreal and visionary, a dream in the morning after an
awakening.



THE END

Project Gutenberg Australia