I

He stared into a hollow that was filled with shifting forms, moving figures that were slices of darkness before the lanterns. Faces passed and repassed before his curious gaze, paused, bent forward, turned, leaned toward one another, disappeared, and it was some minutes before he could make them out, could recognize them as human faces that he had once viewed vacantly in the quiet lanes of Marlborough. He had not expected so much light, so much action. As his eyes adjusted themselves to the scene before them he began to perceive the spectacle as a whole, almost as a painting whose component parts might be observed and then relegated to their proper order. He sensed Walden Slater creeping into the bush beside him but he made no gesture of comprehension, merely shifting his position a trifle so that the farmer, too, might see what was going on in the hollow. For his own part, he was intent on the spectacle before him, watching eagerly for the one face of all faces and subconsciously deliberating in his mind what he should do when he did see that face. The hollow was large and level and the ground upon which these people walked was dark and firm. There was no grass, no growths of any sort. It stretched like a black carpet to the ring of bushes that hemmed it on all sides. It was a natural amphitheater, an arena formed by chance. Circling this expanse of black soil was a series of lanterns, perhaps twenty of them, placed at regular intervals and lighting up the scene as though it were a stage and they were footlights. The beams of yellow glowed upward, striking the lower portions of faces and distorting them. Chins and nostrils and the undersides of cheek-bones were crazily illuminated in this unnatural light. In the center of the hollow loomed a large flat-topped rock, perhaps five feet high. It was black stone glittering now with moisture, with the rain that had fallen so steadily on it all through the day and night. There was something ominous about this stone, something unclean, and the young doctor studied it with intense loathing. Its slimy black sides were like the skin of some great horrid toad, smooth yet studded with offensive warts that caught the glow of the lanterns and flung them back again to the misty night. Dreeme wondered if it were true that crumbling bones were buried in the dark soil beneath this rock which seemed so immovable, so placed there by time in the center of this secret amphitheater. The rock appeared as old as the ages. It seemed riven immutably into the earth. Yet it was unmistakably the Devil Stone and from its moist toad-like surface the Black Man had preached his blasphemous sermons in times past, had conducted the orgiastic liturgies of the Witches’ Sabaoth and the Esbat. There was no one near the stone now. It stood malevolently, a shunned phenomenon in the hollow. “Rock of Ages.” Yes, this was the Rock that George Burroughs meant when he hummed monotonously the old church tune.

Dreeme’s eyes drifted over the faces that moved about in the hollow. There were, perhaps, twenty people present, all men. The low hum of their subdued voices reached him distinctly. They walked about slowly, clutching their rain-coats closely to their tall bodies, their heavy boots falling heavily on the dark soil. Something feverish and repressed in their movements injected a tense note into the assemblage. They seemed uncertain of themselves, a little hysteric and desperately straining to conceal the hysteria that quickened their blood and plucked at their nerves. There was doubt here, a doubt that sickly denied itself. Sober faces gazed blankly at one another and sunken fanatical eyes glittered in the lantern glow like wet beetles. The young doctor observed one tall figure that walked round and round just within the circle of lanterns ceaselessly, pausing before no one but moved apparently by an interior restlessness that would not permit him to stop. As the man passed a short distance from where the young doctor lay hidden he recognized him as Bidwell, the farmer whose land adjoined Westcott’s toward the Saccarac River. Bidwell’s mouth was moving steadily as though he were talking rapidly to himself. And now as Dreeme’s eyes became accustomed to the scene he recognized more faces. There was Lacy, the post-master and proprietor of the general store, a stork-like man with a carbuncular nose, and Winship, one of the selectmen, stout, worried-looking, and somewhat at a loss, and Titubit, the dark hawk-nosed farmer who was supposed to have Indian blood in his veins, and Corey, the tanned white-haired owner of Corey’s Acres on the lower road. Dreeme had attended all of these men at some time or other for minor ailments and he viewed them now with a disbelieving wonder, half-suspecting that any minute the whole scene would vanish in thin air and he would wake up in bed sweating from a nightmare. Yet here they were, and others whose faces he dimly recognized but whose names he could not place, strolling nervously about the dark hollow, waiting restlessly and suspiciously for some evil thing to happen, stirred by some daemon of hereditary madness that had been wakened in their blood and brains after sleeping for years. Dreeme crouched lower in the bushes and watched them attentively. His few garments were saturated with water and the cold wind blew across his back yet his pulses were beating fast enough and the warmth of excitement shuddered along his drenched flesh. Beside him he could feel the heavy shoulders of Walden Slater.

It was all a psychological riddle, something to be unravelled at leisure and explained after the event. Some power had frightened these men out of their taciturn ruts of living into the mockery of an ancient superstition. A legend had come down with uncommon vividness through the centuries and the will of a madman had resurrected it to terrible life. Old impulses, too powerful to resist, had been set free and they were following these impulses suspiciously yet absolutely. Dreeme studied the face of Corey and wondered. White-haired, almost saintly-looking, the farmer walked slowly about in low conversation with Lacy who lifted his round uneven knob of a nose like a wolf about to howl at the moon. The fever was growing on these men now and their movements became faster and jerkier. They stared about them expectantly and as they stared their hands quivered. The yellow lanterns flung fantastic blossoms of light into the bushes, colored blossoms that glowed on the wet branches.

Dreeme caught his breath suddenly. Silently, almost stealthily, Jeffrey Westcott had appeared from behind the black stone. He stood observing the score of men with expressionless dark eyes, watching their movements as they shifted to and fro, saying nothing, waiting for them to see him. Immediately the group approached him, standing within a few feet of the Devil Stone. They gathered silently, standing in a half-circle, their backs to Dreeme and Walden Slater. Westcott observed them coldly and when they had achieved their half-circle and were motionless he climbed to the top of the black slimy stone. Standing so, five feet in the air, Dreeme could see him perfectly, a stocky figure garmented entirely in black, his cloven head bowed slightly, the yellow glow from the lanterns catching the lower part of his face—the blue shaven chin and heavy cheek-bones. In his hands he held a square black book which he lifted slowly. The men before him seemed to sigh and sway back. Westcott held this book high in the air for a full minute. Then he looked up into the misty night air intently and cried in a suppressed hoarse voice:

“Asmodeus! Asmodeus!”

The men stood fixedly, their heads thrust slightly forward as though they were listening. After an instant’s silence Westcott said:

“He stands at Dagon. He enters into me.”

A shudder shook his heavy frame and the black book slipped from his hand, falling to the surface of the stone with a dull slap.

Dreeme, listening as intently as the men, heard nothing but the infrequent spatter of rain-drops as the tree-tops swayed and the wind that shook them, a husky sighing wind that sounded like the hoarse breathing of a giant. He wanted to shout, “You fool! There is nothing to hear but night sounds!” The aspect of Jeffrey Westcott fascinated him, however. The farmer’s face was lighted with an evil smile, his eyes glittered and danced in the lantern-light, and his heavy hands were clasped before him. A tenseness held his bulky body and he seemed to grow with this tenseness, to enlarge until Dreeme could not say whether he were six feet high or twelve. It was an illusion but an illusion so well maintained that the young doctor automatically understood how easily Westcott could sway these superstitious farmers who stood before him, a strained expectancy on their weather-beaten faces, their hands clenched, their bodies visibly quivering. It was an evil transfiguration wrought inwardly. Nothing but the most dynamic belief in one’s self, in one’s own powers, could cause it. The farmer was in a rapt state now, in a moving and speaking trance. He lifted his hands up to the night. In the same suppressed hoarse voice he cried:

“Enter in to us, Asmodeus! Enter in to your heritage! Were we not sold to you by the bond of blood by Salem Village two hundred and thirty years ago? In the deep forest you accepted us and made a pact with us. We forsook all other gods but you for you were the eternal will of man. Though we have slept for generations the ancient pact still holds. Under this rock lies the testimonial of the bones. The bones cry out to you, Asmodeus. We cry out to you.”

A murmur like a sigh swept through the cluster of attentive men.

“By the aching of the bones, we call upon your strength,” cried Westcott.

“By the aching of the bones, we call upon your strength,” murmured the men.

“By the secret head of the Sacred Goat, we call upon your strength,” the farmer cried again.

“By the secret head of the Sacred Goat, we call upon your strength,” repeated the men.

The litany went on.

“By the Black Book that our fathers owned we call upon your strength.”

“By the Black Book that our fathers owned we call upon your strength.”

“By the Hidden Face in the rock we call upon your strength.”

“By the Hidden Face in the rock we call upon your strength.”

“By the Cloven Hoof that walks in the darkness we call upon your strength.”

“By the Cloven Hoof that walks in the darkness we call upon your strength.”

“By the Lost Road that our fathers followed we call upon your strength.”

“By the Lost Road that our fathers followed we call upon your strength.”

“O Asmodeus, give me my purpose.”

“O Asmodeus, give me my purpose.”

Beads of perspiration stood out on Jeffrey Westcott’s forehead. His body shook violently. He cried loudly:

“Asmodeus! Janicot!”

A thin white froth appeared on his lips and his face writhed. The farmers before him were swaying from side to side excitedly and suddenly one of them, little more than a boy, screamed and fell upon the wet ground, his talon-like hands clutching at the black soil.

“Aie! Aie!” shouted the boy, his white face tossing from side to side and his eyes tightly closed. Westcott leaped from the rock and knelt for a moment by the boy. Then he lifted him up and bore him to the great stone, placing him beside the black book. The farmers surged forward, some of them moaning, all of them shaking as though in an intense ague. Their hands were outstretched and quivering.

Dreeme watched the ceremony with amazement, noting that Westcott by the power of his will, apparently, had lashed these people into a mystical fury that was close to the trance-state. They would believe whatever he had to say implicitly now for their individualities were lost and they were a mingled mob madness. The swiftness of the whole proceeding was the surprising part of it to the young doctor. Then he realized that these men had gathered here for some time, that an overpowering realization of helplessness inborn in their blood weakened their powers of resistance, and that Westcott’s powerful personality had sapped their independence and reason long before this. They were a poisoned and hysterical breed.

Westcott stood beside the possessed boy, his hand upon the heaving chest of the victim. He stared about the half-circle with glittering eyes, his yellow teeth—yellow as the flames of the lanterns—bared in a smile.

“He sleeps,” he said, indicating the boy, “he sleeps in the arms of the Master. Dagon is filled with the Master. The ground cries out and the bones tremble.”

Even as he spoke the scene darkened and a gust of wind blew so heavily that the lantern-flames behind their heavy glass protectors slanted sideways. It was like the descent of a sudden cloud, an abrupt eclipse in answer to Westcott’s solemn speech. For an instant it paralyzed the watching doctor and trembling chills, icy-cold, ran up and down his spine. He felt the surge of something huge and shapeless and black and irremediably evil, a presence that was beyond description and vision filling the hollow. A soft hand seemed to tap tentatively at his face and then, without warning, sharp talons clutched at the back of his neck. For an instant he dared not move. He fought fiercely with an intense desire to scream. Then, summoning every iota of his will power, he cautiously raised his hand and thrust back the thorny branch of the bush that the gust of wind had blown against his neck. A flood of relief poured through his tired wet body and as he felt the released blood throbbing through his arteries the gust of wind died away and the lantern-flames lifted their flattened spears of yellow. He thought to himself how easily the imagination could drive the nerves before it in riotous debacle. It was fear that was the great enemy, fear of the unknown, fear of the stronger will, fear of the old wife’s tales that thousands of years of self-preservation against mysterious phenomena had planted in the feeble mortal body. There was no safety in life except by the deliberate massacre of one’s fears. Well, he would throttle these unworthy spasms and surmount the horror of these cruel tricks. He fastened his entire intelligence again upon the scene before him.

The inanimate boy on the Devil’s Stone had ceased to breathe frantically. His bosom no longer rose and fell furiously. Instead of this he seemed to be quietly sleeping. Westcott, placing his arm beneath the boy’s head, raised the body to a sitting posture and the pale unconscious face with its closed eyes gazed out blindly upon the assembled farmers. For an instant Westcott’s hand rested lightly upon the boy’s white forehead. Then he said:

“Are you one with the Name?”

“With the Name,” answered the boy. His voice was high and clear.

“Is the Master with you?” went on Westcott.

“With me,” responded the boy.

“Is he saying things?” proceeded the farmer.

“Saying things,” repeated the boy.

The farmers listened avidly although they still swayed slowly from side to side and now and then one of them would whimper softly as though he were in pain.

“What do you see?” inquired Westcott. His own eyes were shut and he appeared to be undergoing a fierce mental reaction.

“See,” said the boy.

There was a pause while the wind soughed softly in the trees and bushes and the infrequent spatter of great rain-drops fell in the shadows. The boy’s mouth opened and closed speechlessly. He half-raised one arm. His throat throbbed. Then, in the same clear tone in which he had spoken throughout, he said:

“The bones move together. The dust assembles. I see a skeleton. Flesh comes out of darkness like an army of white ants and clusters upon the bones. A body lies beneath the rock. It opens its eyes and lifts its hands. It is the body that is speaking to me.”

He paused. The farmers waited expectantly. The boy’s lips moved again. This time the startling voice of a deep-chested man issued from his mouth. It was like a great voice calling from a tomb and it struck upon Dreeme’s ears with dismay.

“At Dagon we set the Rock for our children’s children’s children. We marched through deep trees and the feathered men watched our fires from the darkness beyond the rings of light. We caroused and danced through the virgin land and the Master walked before us with a smiling face. We raised our rooftrees in the valley without doors and our fires went up to an alien sky. When the moon walked on the farthest hills we traveled the long path to the Rock and danced before the Master. We beat upon cymbals and drums. We whistled and cried lewd words to the naked women who laughed in the bushes. We felt the fever of life in our veins and knew that it was well with us. We were unhumbled and proud and possessors of time. We devoured our enemies for the Master’s will was our will. We set no bounds to life for all life was within our bounds. We bowed only to one law and that was the law of the Master and though the pale faced priests harried us we existed beyond them in a free land of the Master’s conceiving. The Master took us up to the mountain top and showed us the riches of the world and the cities of the plain and we said ‘yes’ to him and all those things became our own. Our farms prospered in the valley without doors and the rain came and we saw that it was well with us. And we knew the Master to be the living god of the free will, the voice that spoke in the darkness to us and said, ‘do so and so,’ and we did these things and we prospered and lived long years and the sun shone upon us.”

The great voice died away and the boy fell back limply upon the stone, his head resting upon the black book. Westcott lifted him quickly and bore him to a side of the circle where he placed him upon the wet ground. The farmers stood motionless now. They were like figures in a trance. They made no gestures as Westcott walked slowly back to the rock and mounted to it. His dark eyes swept over the gathering and from where Dreeme lay he thought that he could see the thin ghost of a smile flit across the farmer’s determined mouth.

“You have heard,” he said. “You have heard the voice from the bones, the voice of your ancestor, speaking. You have heard how good life was when the children of the Master first came into this valley. And how have you fallen away from that high estate! How have you lost that greatness when you walked like the sons of the morning! The years have come between you and the Master and you have fallen away from that source of all power. You bend weary backs over meager farms and live from hand to mouth and your heritage is just beyond you in the shadow of Time. You have but to reach out your hands and take it. Instead of this, you deny the impulses that are in your blood and avoid the final gestures that would liberate you from the entangling bonds of fear and superstition and false gods. There is no other god but the Master! He, alone, exists and he, alone, is the tower of your strength. The Master sums up all things in himself. He is the will, the invulnerable will, the will to power, the will to happiness, the will to self-realization. It is only by symbols and liturgies and ceremonies that you may induce the Master to enter into you. I bring the Master to you. I bring the key to the door, the lantern to the darkness, the will to the deed. I am the Black Man. I am the prophet possessed by the Master. I do not bring you a god that you may see, a god that you may touch. I bring you an essence, an invulnerable essence that speaks through the mouths of living people, that rises in trances, that permeates time, that joins the dead with the living, that is called evil but is yet beyond evil, a god that is strength and food and determination and skill and craft and understanding and self-realization and power. This is the god I bring you and because he has no other name you may call him what you will, Asmodeus, Janicot, Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, any name that stands for the opposite of the cold power that destroys the eternal will within you. He is a jealous god and he will endure no other rivals. He speaks in thunder and he walks upon the mountaintops by night. His face is hidden in darkness and his hands hover over the cities of the plain. The brightness of his face is turned only to the adept. If you desire that complete emancipation from obligations and hardships and the domination of alien things you will turn whole-heartedly to him. Your fathers did it before you and they lived in a Paradisal valley and fulfilled themselves completely. But you must cleanse yourselves of old weaknesses if you would be like your fathers. The will is buried in you but you must excavate it, must dig it out of the dross of many days and many years. To do this you must pass through rituals and ceremonies, must give yourselves whole-heartedly to the Master. Then, and not till then, will you feel the dark flower growing in you, the intense inward ecstasy that lifts you through deliriums to that plane where the Master walks and controls the events of the ages. The rituals are but the outward symbols of the interior miracles. The flesh is a weak and uncertain thing and it must be driven upward into the mystical regions by visible signs and ceremonies. It is for this that I have called you here, calling each one by the sign of the Goat’s Head which your father used before you, that we may establish, or rather renew, the coven of Marlborough, the coven that was driven from Salem Village in 1692 and which has slept with all its symbols beneath this rock for so many years.”

He paused and gazed about him. A few muttered words passed between the farmers, who, while Westcott was talking so persuasively, had recovered in great part from their emotional excitement. Dreeme, from his secret place of vantage, had listened with a reluctant admiration. He could understand that, given the blood impulses of these men and the dark shadow of ancestral urges and one-sided fanaticism, the speech just delivered would seem reasonable and convincing. This was what they had been fighting against half-heartedly for so many decades. The young doctor instinctively thought of all the crazy cults that permeated American life, the free love colonies, the Holy Rollers, the theosophical circles, the Rosicrucians, the Spiritualists, the esoteric societies, and he understood how easy it was to lead the secret wish into the deed. Westcott controlled these men now and he could do with them what he willed. They were ripe for a fanatical outbreak. As the young doctor observed the farmers he noted that there was no opposition whatsoever, no desire to question the truth of what Westcott was saying, no antagonistic rationalism. Even the white-haired Corey seemed to grow in stature to the farmer’s words, to take into himself, as it were, the essence of will of which Westcott spoke. As for the dominating farmer he stood upon the Devil Stone with sparkling eyes, an image of self-contained power, gazing down at the men before him. Bidwell’s nasal voice rose in the stillness.

“What must we do?” he asked.

Westcott shut his eyes. He appeared to be communing with invisible powers. Then he picked up the black book and held it against his breast. He said:

“We must throw all our strength into a sacrifice. Into this sacrifice we must wish all our weaknesses and when the ceremony is accomplished we shall be cleansed and bound together by an awful and secret knowledge.”

He paused and glanced about him as the men gazed fearfully at one another. Then he said:

“We must abolish fear. We must destroy the conscience. We may only do this by a terrible sacrifice.”

He shut his eyes and turned his face upward to the night.

“Asmodeus!” he cried. “Is this well?”

Suddenly from the recumbent body of the boy which lay near the circle of lanterns came the deep voice that they had heard before.

“A sacrifice!” he cried. “A sacrifice!”

At the same instant the bushes opposite Dreeme’s haven of concealment parted and the Reverend George Burroughs, tall, sallow, serious, stepped into the light of the lanterns. He walked slowly toward the rock, his eyes expressionless wells of darkness. Dreeme’s pulses beat faster at the sight of him for he understood that the presence of the preacher meant also the presence of Deborah. Beside him he felt Walden Slater cautiously move. The farmer seemed to be extricating something from beneath his coat. Burroughs paused by the rock, his long yellow hand resting lightly on the toad-like surface. He gazed about him calmly. Dreeme, as far away as he was, could sense the impalpable atmosphere of malevolence that emanated from the preacher. It was a still icy restrained power confident of itself and supremely indifferent. For the first time the young doctor saw the preacher as he was, a creature of vindictive strength and sly calculation, a quiet creeping madness that permeated Marlborough. If Jeffrey Westcott was the self-appointed god of this impossible fanaticism then George Burroughs was the high priest, the militant Satanist, the tactician who hid behind a veil of holiness. The man’s sallow horse-like countenance dominated the assembly although he had not spoken a word. Even the repressed hysteria of Jeffrey Westcott faded before this still horrible strength that poised lightly by the Devil’s Stone and with a single glance read the minds of the perturbed and chaotic farmers before him. Dreeme crouched lower in his place of concealment. Beside him he could feel the tense form of Walden Slater coiled like a heavy steel spring, ready to dart forth at the slightest gesture. There was strength in Walden Slater and it seemed to seep mercifully into the cold body of the young doctor. Burroughs opened his wide mouth and his neighing voice broke the shifting silence. He said:

“In the beginning there was nothing. But the Will moved on the face of the flickering gases and the Will established the earth and the vegetation on the face of the earth and the beasts and men who walked upon the face of the earth. And there were two gods. And one was the god of that weakness called good and the other was the god of that strength called evil. But the god of goodness was an invisible god who lived in a mist. The god of evil made the world and all the things that are in the world. He fashioned all our pleasures and placed the seed of his eternal Will within us. It is that god who calls us to the place called Dagon that we may worship him and enter into our heritage.”

He paused and stared before him. For an instant Dreeme thought that the piercing black eyes of the preacher threaded the heavy leaves of the bush behind which the young doctor lay and he tightened his muscles, preparing to spring forward at the first word. Burroughs made no gesture, however. His eyes reverted to the farmers before him. He was patently searching for new words, for further demonstration of his Manichean doctrine of an evil god controlling an evil world. Apparently he found the words for his neighing voice rose again in the stillness.

“We have been chosen out of all the people in this land for we are the children of our fathers. I am the child of my fathers and if you will read the withered records you will find that my name is not unknown among the disciples who followed the Master. I have lived and died many times. I have walked through many centuries. I have listened to the Voice in many lands and the Voice has told me many things. I carry the wisdom of the decades within me. I have told you these things before, in your houses, in the fields, in the dark places of the forest. You have listened to me. You are here. Together we shall discipline our wills until they become a part of the major Will that controls all things. We shall persecute our enemies in the darkness. We shall achieve our ends, our desires, through the malefic intensity of our wills. We shall dance at the full of the moon and sink into divine trances where we shall discover all things. The Past and the Future will become like open books to us. To reach this desirable plane we must murder the pale sick consciences, inheritances of the god of mist, that murmur weakly within us. We shall cleanse ourselves by charms and sacrifices.”

His voice changed to a deeper tone and he gazed significantly at the absorbed farmers.

“The one sin in our decalogue is weakness,” he said. “There was a man amongst us who was weak. He was shaken by qualms. Through his stupid brain crept the faint messages of conscience. He listened to a woman and became her willing tool. He drew into our secret circle a stranger, an obtuse fool from the outer world whose curiosity was like that of a gossiping woman. What became of that man?”

He glanced savagely about him.

“The will of the Master came into me,” he cried, “and I struck him down by the river. With my own hands I drove the pegs into the eyes that had seen too much!”

Dreeme heard Walden Slater’s suddenly indrawn breath.

“And the obtuse fool!” neighed Burroughs, “What about the obtuse fool?”

“Let him leave the valley,” said Jeffrey Westcott suddenly. “Let him leave the valley and forget us.”

“Too late!” cried Burroughs, still facing the farmers and paying no attention to Westcott. “He must not leave the valley. He must be buried in the valley.”

Dreeme’s mouth was a sharply drawn line. They would have to catch their bird first.

“The will of the Master is ruthless,” declared the preacher, stretching out a long skinny hand toward the silent group of farmers. The men mumbled and muttered among themselves. Dreeme could see that they were still crazed, that they were like men in a trance half-knowing what they were doing but without the power of asserting themselves. Both Westcott and Burroughs had these victims semi-mesmerized. They had ceased to be rational men but were fanatics oblivious of consequences and moved by a common spirit.

The insensible boy lying near the circle of lanterns moaned. He lifted a hand weakly and it fell with a wet thud to the dark trampled soil.

“Sacrifice!” he cried, “Sacrifice!”

The glittering-eyed farmers surged about the rock. They lifted up their hands to the night and bayed like lost hounds. Bidwell began to shake rapidly and then to perform an awkward dance before the Devil Stone. His eyes were closed. Suddenly Lacy lifted his snout up and laughed, a long high-pitched mad laugh that sounded like a scream. The white-haired Corey was clapping his hands together rhythmically. Neither Westcott nor Burroughs moved. They stood by the rock watching the insane farmers and once Dreeme thought he caught a significant glance that passed between the two men. It was impossible to tell how sincere these two leaders were, how much faith they placed in the crazy doctrine they enunciated. Dreeme was certain that Westcott was driven by his theory of the omnipotent will, that it had unhinged him, that one half of his brain was diseased, but Burroughs was different. He might just be a great charlatan, a born criminal who saw a way of controlling the community by urging it into crime. Ostensibly he was a minister of the gospel but inwardly he was a ferocious beast, a furious figure all the more to be feared because of his saintly mask so well worn in public. There was a blood-lust in him but whether or not this blood-lust was propped up by the knowledge that he was a direct descendant of the Salem witches was a mystery. Perhaps one would never know. As Dreeme watched the swaying madness of the farmers he recalled how, for two years, he had sat at a common table with the Reverend George Burroughs and given him no more attention than he had the back of the chair against which he had leaned. It was amazing, something that either gave proof of the preacher’s skill at self-concealment or his own stupidity as an observer. However, it was too late now to wonder at these things or to berate one’s self for failing to read character as it loomed before one’s nose. As Dreeme watched the gyrations of the farmers his glance traveled beyond them to the line of bushes opposite him, drawn, as it were, by some invisible power and there, hanging bodiless on the wet green leaves, he saw the white face of Martha Westcott peering into the circle. He was not surprised to see her, indeed, he had expected her to put in an appearance sooner or later. Just what her status was among these men, however, he could not say. He did not believe that either Westcott or Burroughs trusted her too far or permitted her to go any great distance beyond their scrutiny. Her appearance seemed to be a signal for Burroughs walked rapidly toward her and disappeared into the bushes with her. Dreeme’s attention now concentrated upon that spot in the bushes for he was sure that behind it was the woman he loved, the woman for whom he would fight until the last drop of blood in his body had been spilled. The farmers, too, were watching this spot in the bushes through which Burroughs had disappeared. But they were watching with a mad laughing expectancy, their tanned hands stretched out, their faces twisted and their eyes glittering.

The bushes parted and Martha Westcott walked through them very slowly. Her eyes were shut and she seemed to be in a trance. Holding her arms straight before her she held in her hands a long thin-bladed knife. Gazing neither to right nor left she proceeded straight to the Devil Stone and stood by it holding the knife outstretched. Jeffrey Westcott took the shining blade from her and placed it upon the rock. An awful silence had fallen upon the hollow. The rain-drops had ceased and even the wind, that had soughed so hoarsely through the leaves, had died away. The farmers stood like wax figures, their faces frozen into twisted smiles, their arms stiffly outheld. Dreeme felt the flesh crawling upon his body. He stared fixedly at Martha Westcott, noting how like some strange priestess she stood in her long black garment, her white insensitive face an oval of clear luster in the light of the lanterns, her heavy eyelids partially lowered over the great wide eyes, her archaic mouth a mystic hieroglyph. She was like a being from another world, a spectre from some pagan land. Though her smooth white shoulder was garmented in black he could sense the blue goat’s head burning upon it, shining through the close fabric, the goat’s head that made her one with these maniacs who gathered in the darkness of Nigger Swamp. Conflicting thoughts rushed through the young doctor’s head. This woman had desired him. This evil goddess had come to him in the middle of the night and she had shaken his will. If they were both in another world perhaps.... He swiftly put the thought from him. No! No! He must not weaken. He must not think of her in any way except as an ominous reality that would steal his soul from him.

The bushes parted again and Burroughs strode forward swiftly carrying in his arms a limp form. Dreeme recognized the preacher’s burden as soon as he appeared with it and sprang up from the ground. It was Deborah. She hung limply from the long black arm of Burroughs, like some fragile white bird that had been shot down but not killed. Even as Dreeme sprang to his feet Walden Slater’s resistless arm, the muscular arm of a giant, dragged him down again and held him in the shadow of the bush with a clutch like iron. “Wait!” the farmer whispered. “Wait!” Burroughs advanced rapidly to the Devil Stone and laid Deborah’s body upon it. The head of the girl fell sideways and Dreeme could see her thin face and the blue circles of her closed eyes. Her bosom was rising softly and regularly. She appeared to be in a calm sleep. Burroughs, his black eyes fixed on the recumbent figure of the girl, reached for the long knife and took it up. He climbed slowly to the top of the Devil Stone and stood towering above the assemblage. He opened his mouth to speak. He raised the knife. It glittered wanly in the light of the flickering lanterns.

“Asmo...” he began.

A thunderous report over Dreeme’s head pitched him forward. In the single instant when he sprang down the bank he saw the preacher’s eyes wide with amazement and the dark gush of blood out of his neck. Then the Reverend George Burroughs fell forward as a log falls, the knife clattering from his hand upon the Devil Stone, and landed with a heavy thud upon the dark soil. His skull crashed against an iron lantern with the sound of a bursting cocoanut. Dreeme, already in the circle, leaped over the body and rushed toward the rock. Behind him he heard Walden Slater kicking the lanterns over as he stumbled forward, the smoking revolver in his hand. The amazed farmers had scattered in all directions and as Dreeme gathered Deborah up in his arms he caught a moment’s glimpse of Westcott, the black book clutched to his breast, darting through the bushes. The farmer was heading straight into Nigger Swamp. All of this was observed automatically for the young doctor’s sole concern was for the girl who had lain so helplessly upon the Devil Stone. As he staggered along with her he gazed anxiously into her face and listened to her breathing. She stirred a trifle and moaned and a second later one thin arm slid over his shoulder blindly. He understood that she was slowly coming out of an hypnotic sleep. He wanted to shout, to laugh, to burst into tears. He clutched her all the tighter to him in his delirium of joy and hurried forward striving to find the narrow ribbon of road that would lead him back to the Westcott farm and the highway to Marlborough. He had forgotten the maniac farmers, Westcott and Burroughs, Martha Westcott, even Walden Slater. It was not until he had plunged one leg up to the knee in the slime of the marsh and knew that he was off the road that he reconsidered his predicament and knew that only Slater could guide him through the swamp. He turned and looked directly into the farmer’s face. There was a light of victory in Walden Slater’s countenance and his eyes glistened. In his hand he still held the revolver.

“Here,” said the farmer. He reached down a burly arm and hauled both Dreeme and the girl back to the road. Then, without a word, he took Deborah from the young doctor’s arms and stepped ahead. They circled the hollow partially without gazing through the bushes and soon struck the path by which they had come. Then, at a dog-trot, the sturdy farmer started back to town with Dreeme at his heels.

“What ... happened?” inquired the young doctor breathlessly and bewilderedly.

“Judgment Day,” replied Walden Slater. His voice was grim.

Behind them they could hear confused voices.

“Will there ... be more ... fighting?” panted Dreeme.

Walden Slater cleared his throat.

“Nope,” he said.

He coughed loudly and spat into the darkness.

“Nothing to fight about,” he added. “Nothing to make these fool farmers mad now. It’s all over.”

They went on in silence after that. It was not until they had left the swamp, climbed the open stretch into Briony Wood, and were once more among the trees that Walden Slater spoke again.

“Westcott got away,” he said significantly. His voice was the voice of a trial judge. He was the law personified. Dreeme understood him perfectly.

“You’ve got five shells left,” he said.

“We’ll stop at the Westcott farm,” replied the farmer.