I

Dreeme sat gloomily in front of Humphrey Lathrop and waited for the old doctor to deliver any advice that he might have to give.

“There you are,” he had concluded, an exasperated perplexity lining his face. “I’m out! It’s a closed community so far as I am concerned. A murder is committed, a murder as obvious as the nose on your face, and I can do nothing about it. I’ve tried. I’ve run about town in the boiling sun all afternoon, I’ve even been to Leeminster. What’s the result? Nothing!”

Humphrey Lathrop pursed his great lips and looked wise. “He’s the frog,” thought Dreeme. He was thinking of the old story of the frog who puffed herself up until she burst. The little frog had seen a cow. He had described it to his mother. It was big, enormous. “Was it as large as this?” she had inquired, puffing herself up to formidable proportions. “Larger,” the little frog had said. The big frog scowled (imagine a frog scowling!) and had puffed herself still bigger. Her abdomen had distended to an horrendous bulge. “As large as this?” she had asked proudly. “Larger,” responded the little frog. The mother was beside herself. She had puffed valiantly again and her green skin had stretched and swelled wonderfully. She was a rotund circle of emerald. “As large as this?” she had shrieked. “Oh, larger,” the little frog answered gloomily. He had probably become a bit bored by this time and had wanted to go off and sit on a lily pad and snap at flies. With a last desperate effort the great frog indrew a huge breath. There was a pop and then no frog. The little frog had looked up in the sky and then down at the ground but he had failed to discover his mother. She had burst into fragments, disappeared entirely. Humphrey Lathrop puffed himself up in this way. Some day he would burst and disappear. And then Dreeme felt quite ashamed of his malicious analogy. Humphrey Lathrop was a kind helpful old man. His importance was only the privilege of age. He was not consciously puffing himself to impossible proportions. He was merely trying to ease Dreeme’s mind, to act the wise counsellor. The young doctor observed him and nearly smiled. Then his levity abruptly died away as his reason thrust him back among his grievances.

“There you are,” he had said. “What’s the result? Nothing!”

“It’s always the result,” said Humphrey Lathrop gloomily.

Dreeme reiterated himself.

“After I saw the body I questioned the coroner. I wanted to study the wooden pegs. I gave him the scrap of paper with the goat’s head on it. I wanted to talk about time, about possible murderous weapons, about a dozen and one things. He put me off with silly generalities. I went to Bidwell, who seemed to have the confidence of those infernally silent farmers, and pleaded for an investigation without loss of time. He evaded me. I talked to the damned selectmen or whatever they are, Winship and Collender. There was nothing doing. Nothing but antagonism in sleepy little suspicious eyes. The constable was busy getting in some parched hay. He knew nothing about it and didn’t want to know anything about it. He was a hopeless fool. Finally I went to Leeminster. The officials there referred me back to Marlborough. I tell you, Humphrey, it is impossible to start a serious investigation of this murder. By God, I’ll write to Boston. I’ll telegraph Washington.”

He paused breathless. Lathrop broke into a low chuckle.

“You can’t do anything,” he said.

They sat in silence after that and Dreeme smoked moodily. The twilight drooped its dark wing over the valley. The white hawks that had hovered in the sky were gone now. Shadows crept up the tree-lined street and squirmed into the corners of the houses. There was a shadow over the Saccarac River. A shadow over the trampled bank where Wagner’s body had crushed the reeds. It would be night soon. The sable mantle would drop and the lights would be extinguished.

“It’s impossible,” said Lathrop. The great chair creaked as he shifted his huge body. “Go away, Daniel. Don’t worry yourself. Marlborough will look out for itself as it has always looked out for itself. You can do nothing about it.”

The air seemed to sigh about them.

“An investigation is not too much to expect,” said Dreeme doggedly.

Lathrop shook his mountainous shoulders. His three chins quivered with the gesture.

“Don’t expect anything here,” he said after a moment. The shadow of night was in his eyes.

II

Dreeme walked down the road to his house. The night was extraordinarily clear, the heavens being covered with a huge wheel of glittering stars. Lifting his head the young doctor could see the Great Dipper, the Little Bear, the steadfast North Star. The Milky Way was a shoal of misty light pricked to diamond points by infinities of sparkling gems. Between the hosts of stars and the road were the crowded tops of the ancient trees interposing their thick foliage. The huge branches idly shaking their multitudes of leaves made moving patterns upon the road, crazy designs and impossible arabesques. Dreeme stepped through these checkered patterns unseeingly. Two shadows walked on either side of him. One was a shadow of ruddy gloom, the secret lustre of a beryl; the other, a shadow of dim light, the shy reflection of crystal. He walked between them and the moon moved like a lantern in the hand of some sky-traveler above him. The shadows crept closer to him and he instinctively spread his arms to keep them from him. There was no sound in the quiet evening and yet they were speaking to him. The ruddy shadow said:

“I do not say ‘no’ to anything.”

Dreeme walked faster. The shadow of dim light said:

“I had a very good lawyer, Mr. Stopes.”

“I do not hear you,” said Dreeme. His pace increased until he was trudging along at a furious rate.

III

In his study Dreeme turned the pages of the book impatiently. Finally he closed it and placed it upon the table. He would think. He wondered if he ever stopped thinking, if, indeed, his cerebral efforts were ever more than an ineffectual attempt. The clock struck nine and he noted it automatically. Another day had fled by. A day of excitement and terror and perplexity. He sat desolately and watched the yellow flame of the lamp as it sputtered despondently. The chimney was soot-stained. Mrs. Slater should clean it. There was small reason to think when he could find no answers to his thoughts. Perhaps Humphrey Lathrop was right, after all. If he had troubled his mind about nothing his mind would not be troubling him so fiercely as it undoubtedly was now. Perhaps the time had come for him to pack his books, his trunk, and his bags, and take his way eastward out of the valley, leaving the dour natives to live their lives in their own way and to continue to clutch the mystery that permeated the community to their secretive bosoms. Why should he stay here where he was a barely-tolerated stranger and prescribe cures for unthankful patients who viewed even his ministrations with suspicion? It was no career for a young man. The rewards could be counted neither in money nor in friendships. He was a fool, an infernal fool.

And thinking these thoughts he reached a hand to pick up his book but paused, the hand poised in mid-air. She had asked him to come to the burned mill again that night. During the troublous surprises of the day he had forgotten all about it. It was inconceivable to imagine that she would appear after the unusual happenings of the day, happenings that had touched her so closely. Was she not sitting in her room, understanding, perhaps, why Wagner had been killed? Dreeme shuddered at the approach of the thought which he had kept so resolutely out of his mind. To go to the burned mill now would be a very fool’s errand. He would find nothing there but blackened bricks and charred beams and the disturbed dust where he had sat in the broken embrasure with her and watched her obvious efforts to entangle him. He had even told her that he would not come, told her so brusquely and with no pity for her demands. What had she said to him? “I will tell you a great many things tomorrow night.” What had she meant by that? What was she driving at, anyway? His hand dropped to his lap and he sat gazing vacantly at the yellow lamp-flame.

The first time he had seen her, she had fascinated him. He supposed that was the word for it. Anyway, he had felt her presence, had sensed the magnetic appeal of her power, the outrageous suggestion of her will. Nature had endowed her with certain unusual attributes and chief among them was this curious power of disturbing the rational equilibrium of the men about her. She was sly and skillful in her amoral way, determined to have what she wanted regardless of the consequences. There might be some things to be said on her side, particularly by the special pleader who, dominated by her undoubted beauty, perished in the spell of her personality. But Dreeme knew that she could not dominate him in this way although at the first she had disturbed him greatly. Even now he knew that he would be visibly excited in her presence. The man in him would tremble before the woman in her. She could not touch his brain, though, for that was an insuperable bulwark between them. It was his stout shield of defence and beat upon it as she might with the sharp sword of her loveliness she could not hack her way through. She was like the beautiful and heartless wife of the Afrit in the Arabian Nights, the one who possessed the vast number of rings, each one a souvenir of a time when she had betrayed her sleeping lord. Well, he would not be a victim. No ring of his should join that glittering and invisible chain that he suspected Martha Westcott wore about her white throat. He was safeguarded from her by a welling desire that rose in his heart, by a desire that he knew would keep him in Marlborough until the time came when he might go away not alone. A shadow of dim light, the shy reflection of crystal, stood near him now and his eyes brightened as his thoughts shifted.

He had helped her anyway. He had stood between her and the callousness of her reticent relations, between her and the despairing selfishness of her helpless aunt. She had wanted to bury her on a lonely farm, to engulf her in the very mystery that tormented all his faculties. He wondered if she was sleeping now in the house next door, lying with one thin pathetic white arm stretched across the bright patches of the crazyquilt and dreaming, perhaps, of him. Dreeme smiled at the yellow lamp-flame. He was growing sentimental. Her confident helplessness, her blue-eyed surrender to circumstances, her ultimate faith in the goodness of humanity, her unquestioning dependence on him, all these things touched him acutely. He felt his eyes grow moist at the thought of her. She, at least, was real. He had said that to himself before and he would say it again and again for it gave him a strange strength. She counted and made the whole thing worth while. He could depend on her as she depended on him. He would constitute himself her champion, the fighter who would stand between her and ... Dagon. The name sprang spontaneously into his mind. “Dagon,” he said aloud, listening to the sound of the word in the little study. “Dagon.” It meant something. It was a place.

His mind turned back. “I will tell you a great many things tomorrow night.” Did she mean anything, after all, by that statement? Or was it merely a snare, a bait to inveigle him back to a rendezvous that he found in itself distasteful? Would she, for instance, tell him about Dagon, describe it to him, indicate where it was, explain what it meant? If pushed to a last extremity of desire she might. He flushed at the thought of so befooling her. Still.... He was fighting with whatever weapons he could grasp. If only.... The clock noisily announced nine-thirty. Of course, she would not be there. She would never dare to come after what had happened the night before. Go ... stay ... go ... stay. The clock was ticking it now. Still undecided he rose up and reached for his hat. It would do no harm to take a walk anyway, to stroll in the cool of the evening as the Reverend George Burroughs would say. Dagon ... Dagon. He closed the door softly behind him and stood in the moonlight.

IV

The burned mill stood in the bright moonlight, its charred door yawning on the road. It looked like the sun-dried skull of a buffalo resting forlornly on the dry sand of a parched plain. Yet about it were the trees shot through with a milky light and beyond it was the silver blade of the Saccarac River. Dreeme walked slowly through the door wondering if she would be waiting there for him. Inside he paused with a brief start of surprise and anger as his eyes located the figure in the broken embrasure. The moonlight flowed in crystal over a cloven head bowed forward in a listening attitude. This shaven cranium seemed phosphorescent in the rich glow.

“Good evening, doctor,” said Jeffrey Westcott. There was the hint of a grim levity in his voice. He stood up, his powerful arms swinging ape-like at his sides, waiting for the young doctor to approach closer. Dreeme eyed him speculatively and without fear. Of course. He might have known if he had thought clearly enough about it.

“I’m afraid that this is an abrupt surprise for you,” remarked the farmer. His tone was studiously polite, the tone of a man about to have business dealings with a stranger. The snarl that had permeated it the first night when Dreeme had removed the bullet from his plump calf was missing. The young doctor approached him slowly and sat down in the embrasure. Well, if he was in for a scene.... Westcott turned, the moonlight rippling across his flat face. His eyes and teeth glittered in the flood of light.

“It is a surprise,” said Dreeme calmly. “I expected to meet your wife here.”

He might as well have it over with at once.

“She is detained,” answered Westcott softly.

“You must not misunderstand me,” proceeded Dreeme, a trifle stiffly. “Your wife and I....”

Westcott spread a broad hand deprecatingly.

“I know my wife,” he said in a very low voice.

There was silence then while Dreeme shifted his eyes from the farmer to the scummed waters of the mill-pond. They were like an old opaque mirror in the moon. Did he know his wife, though? Did anybody know his wife. Astarte Syriaca. The wife of the Afrit. What was she?

“No, no, doctor,” resumed Westcott as though he were reading Dreeme’s thoughts. “My wife’s little vagaries do not disturb me. She discommodes me at infrequent times but I have a remedy for it.”

Dreeme glanced at Westcott’s long powerful arms.

“I suppose you beat her,” he remarked shortly.

The farmer flung back his head and laughed, a low rumbling laugh, a hollow burst of merriment that rattled among the blackened beams.

“Nothing so simple as that,” he said, after he had recovered himself. “Nothing so simple as that. You’re a trifle primitive, doctor.”

There was a faint hint of hysteria behind the calmness of Westcott. Dreeme could sense it, a far-away excitement that was kept under control only by an effort of the mind. The farmer was laboring under an unrest that he desired to conceal. The young doctor sat coolly gazing into the scummed mirror of the mill-pond. There were no faces there, not even the reflection of the silver drum-head of the moon, nothing but a glow, a blank meaningless glow. The farmer sucked in a long breath suddenly.

“When are you going away, Doctor Dreeme?” he inquired. There was a finality in the question that made it as much an order as a query.

“I don’t expect to go away,” said Dreeme.

So that was it? He was to be forced out of town, was he?

“Do you find much that holds you here?” Westcott’s tone was studiously innocent, devoid of any sly innuendo. Yet the implied order was there.

“I find much that interests me here,” answered the young doctor. He wanted to add, “Even you,” but thought better of it. Let the farmer show his teeth in his own way. Suddenly he felt Westcott’s broad hand on his shoulder.

“Doctor Dreeme,” the farmer said. “You had better go away from here. The farmers don’t want you any more. They are suspicious and ill at ease with you. You are fashioned from a different kind of flesh than they are. Your mind works differently. There are doctors who can come from the outside, from that world of cities where everybody is more or less the same in social relationships, and settle here and be of some use but you are not one of them. Old Doctor Lathrop was like that. You are too ... too speculative, too eager to find out things, too unwilling to permit the valley to go its own way and employ its own methods. The itch of curiosity is too strong inside you. These men who scrape at the soil do not want active intelligences about them. They distrust strangers. Go away. Forget that you were ever here and forget the people who are here. The world has forgotten them and they desire no less than to stay forgotten. This is good advice that I am giving you for I know what I am talking about. I may not mingle much with these people but I know their minds. After all, I am one of them. I tell you to go away ... before you are sent away in a manner humiliating to you.”

The heavy hand dropped from Dreeme’s shoulders. The dark eyes studied him curiously.

“Thanks for the advice,” said the young doctor. “I’ll stay.”

“Why are you so obtuse?” asked Westcott sadly. Behind the intonations fluttered the tiny scarlet bird of hysteria.

Dreeme became a trifle angry.

“I’m not obtuse,” he snapped. “That’s why you want me to go away. You’re afraid of what I’ll find out. Of what I’ll discover about your wax dolls and your goats’ heads and your hypnotic charlatanry and your murdered hired man and ... and your place called Dagon!”

Westcott’s face became distorted in the moonlight. The scarlet bird flew upward with a feverish beating of wings.

“You fool! You fool!” he cried, in a strained raucous voice. “That’s it! You must be made to leave this valley even if you are carried out of it!”

Dreeme laughed shortly.

The blazing eyes of Westcott moved closer to his face.

“Do you think we care one tinker’s damn about you?” he shouted. “Do you flatter yourself that we are afraid of you? You simple idiot! We are doing our best to get rid of you without hurting you! You mean nothing to us. You are stumbling about in the darkness and don’t know where you are. You are pitting your puny mind and strength against a power that is as old as the Egyptians, a power that established itself in this valley nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. We who have listened to the voice of the Master need fear nothing but deliverance from the Master.”

“Have I gotten on your nerves as badly as that?” cried Dreeme maliciously.

Westcott’s voice had changed and a crazy ecstasy was in it. The scarlet bird filled the burned mill with a hysteric swishing of wings.

“He walks on the hills at night. He whistles to the Sacred Goat and snaps his fingers at the moon and stars. In the dark palms of his hands is all the power of the earth. He stands at the place called Dagon and his feet are rooted like mountains.”

Dreeme rose to his feet. Westcott was swaying like a drunken man and a thin white froth bubbled on his lips.

“Aie‑e‑e‑e, Asmodeus!” he screamed. “Sweep this man out of my father’s holy place!”

Dreeme thought he was about to fall upon the ground and he stretched out a hand toward him. Westcott shuddered all through his heavy body. Then, as suddenly as it had come, his delirium passed away. The madness died out of his eyes and voice and he sank down in the embrasure. The scarlet bird had flown away on the wind.

Westcott lifted his hand to his eyes and sat for a moment in silence. Then he turned to Dreeme.

“I am taken with seizures,” he said rapidly. “I am an extremely nervous man. You must not take my outbreak too seriously. You are a doctor. You know.”

Dreeme sat down opposite him in the embrasure. The far-away light in the depths of his mind was glowing so brightly that it dazzled his reason. Shapes passed before it and they were familiar but he could not quite identify them. He glanced sharply at Westcott. The farmer, quite himself, was smiling slyly, secretively.

“Nervous delirium,” he said confidentially, tapping his cloven head. “I lose control of myself.”

Dreeme eyed him searchingly.

“I am not so sure,” he said. “Are you all right now?”

Westcott nodded. The young doctor noted that the farmer’s hands were quivering, however.

“As you admit I am a doctor,” he said, “perhaps you will give me a doctor’s privilege of questioning you. Do you ever take drugs?”

“I do not take drugs,” replied Westcott, “and I do not give you a doctor’s privilege of questioning me. When I need a doctor I send for one. I do not need one now.”

The bright moon placed a silver sword between them. Westcott rose to his feet.

“I have given you my advice,” he said, “You will do as you please about it.”

He turned toward the door.

“Wait,” cried Dreeme. Westcott turned on his heel and regarded him smilingly.

“Will you answer three questions?” the young doctor asked. Westcott said:

“Ask them and I will answer or not as I see fit.”

“Why did you hypnotize Deborah?”

“I didn’t hypnotize Deborah.”

“Who killed Wagner?”

“I don’t know who killed Wagner.”

“Where is the place called Dagon?”

“I never heard of the place called Dagon.”

“Three lies in as many seconds,” said Dreeme bitterly.

“Only two of them were lies,” remarked Westcott. He actually chuckled. His hands had stopped trembling and he stood easily, nonchalantly, watching Dreeme sardonically with his large dark eyes.

“No, doctor,” he said. “You are beating at a stone wall. When I first saw you I detested you. Later I revised my reaction to you. In fact, I feel a sympathetic pity for you. You are so ... so obtuse. Sooner or later you will cut your own throat.”

“You say you belong here,” broke out Dreeme, ignoring the farmer’s remarks. “I don’t believe it. You don’t talk like a farmer. You have nothing in common with Slater or Bidwell or Barnson. You live alone out in that secluded house. Are you so ashamed of yourself that you exist so secretly? What are you up to in that room lined with books? Are you fashioning yourself into the image of an old god?”

The last question had popped into his head suddenly. He was quite fearless, indeed, he experienced the peculiar sensation that there was a conversational rapport between him and the farmer if he could only find the key to it. There was no doubt in his mind now that Westcott was mad, that he was ridden by some monstrous theory, that he pursued some irrational objective. He suspected that if he could discover the proper opening Westcott would pour out as much of it as he dared. He began to believe that the farmer was a theoretical fool masked as a lion. His last question had arrested Westcott who had already turned to go.

“What’s that?” asked the farmer. “What’s that?”

He turned slowly. He said:

“What do you know about old gods?”

“Perhaps I know more than you think,” insinuated Dreeme craftily.

Westcott eyed him suspiciously and with some concern.

“I wonder ...” he mused to himself and then broke off. He surveyed Dreeme coolly.

“You picked that question up somewhere?” he said. “You never thought of it yourself.”

A light dawned on him and he smiled.

“Ah, dear Martha,” he murmured. “Dear talkative Martha.”

He came back and sat down in the embrasure. The moonlight flung great silver arms about him.

“You bring to life an inborn loquaciousness,” he said. “I had forgotten the need of conversation. Doctor Dreeme, I am not an ignorant man. I have studied in three countries and I bear a degree from one of the most famous German universities. I have traveled in Arabia and in Persia and in India. I have lived among the secret priests of unknown religions. Behind all their conflicting dogmas I discovered one objective. Years ago the peculiar circumstances of my birth pushed me into a specific line of investigation. The seeds of that particular knowledge for which I sought were buried in this valley and I settled here with the determination to foster them and cause them to grow. You say that I have nothing in common with the farmers of Marlborough but that only reveals your ignorance. I have this in common with them,—they, too, know of the seed. They, too, keep the ground fertile that it may grow in its appointed time. Their lives and the lives of their forefathers are but a preparation for the time when that seed will sprout. I am the self-constituted gardener. I am the man who directs.”

He paused and gazed across the moonlit room. His eyes were filmed, trance-like, and he seemed to be looking inward at the secret growths of his mind.

“To fashion myself in the image of an old god,” he murmured. “That is a crass way of putting it. There are no old gods. There are only new gods, gods builded out of our invincible wills and forced by the strength of intelligence into the domains of high powers. The greatest of all gods is man’s will. If a man possesses enough knowledge he can do anything, shape the destinies of those about him, influence the comings and goings upon the surface of the earth, cause wars and the breakup of nations, and even, when the seed is sprouted and the tree has flowered, defeat the purpose of death.”

Westcott seemed entirely unconscious of Dreeme. He was talking to himself now.

“‘And the will therein lieth which dieth not,’” he quoted. “The instincts of man are constantly drawn toward what, for want of a better word, we call evil, as a filing of iron is drawn toward a magnet. Evil is therefore the fountainhead of life. All the gods, Buddha, Allah, Christ, are the enemies of the will for they pretend to dominate it. The only god is that demon of the mind who places himself in bold antagonism to the high tyrants of the heavens. Satan is the only god and he is the god that we daily create out of our will. All that we are springs out of evil. We have misunderstood evil so long, masked it in outrageous masks and clothed it in obscene garments, that we forget that it is a pure essence, that it is evil—as we understand evil—only when we compare it with our artificially created good. The animals know no evil because they know no good. They know nothing but a great impulse pulling them one way always,—the way of self-emancipation. It should be so with us. There is neither evil nor good but a sole purpose and that purpose is the domination of the will over matter, the power of regulating time by the exertion of the will. Within us the sixth sense lies dormant. We taste, touch, smell, hear and see but these are animal functions. The sixth sense is to will. When that is discovered we shall be the lords of creation. How can we develop and strengthen this weak will that staggers like an infant child in the dark corridors of our brains? The old magicians did not know. I have read all their books and my house is filled with them. Can the will be sharpened by symbols, by monstrous symbols that tear our time accustomed minds from the old impulses and subserviencies? May we by building an artificial structure of liturgies and ceremonies and sacrifices, by constant allegories that call the imaginative faculties of the will into exertion, discipline and exercise that weakness that is our shame today? In other words, may we by a complete reversal of all those religious mummeries that subjected our will and made it puny before the imaginary gods, destroy the prison walls we have builded about ourselves? We made the gods by worshiping them, by fearing them. Can we unmake them by reviling them, by walking boldly before those pillars of hollow smoke? There was once a group of people who believed that the will might become paramount if they followed the dictates of their mystic senses regardless of so-called good. They called the will by a symbolic name and they met in secret forest clearings. They made a pledge with evil and they barely understood why they did it. They....”

Westcott stopped suddenly and looked at Dreeme. The trance-like light died out of his dark eyes.

“I will not tell you any more,” he said. “Why should I talk to you of these things. You do not understand.”

“There are some things I understand,” answered Dreeme. “You associate Satan with the free will. You imagine you can strengthen your own will to superhuman dimensions by denying the impulses of good. You....”

“I deny no impulses,” said Westcott roughly. “I follow the solitary impulse.”

He rose to his feet.

“Good-night, doctor,” he said. “Take my advice and go away.”

“Go away!” cried Dreeme. “Why should I go away??”

“Because,” replied Westcott, “even a fool may learn wisdom.”

He strode heavily to the door, his injured leg swaying his body from side to side as he walked. He did not even turn back as he passed out into the full moonlight. A moment later Dreeme heard his uneven stride as he passed over the little bridge. Dreeme sat alone in the burned mill and looked at the scummed water of the quiet pond. One thing was certain. Westcott was a mad man. He was a megalomaniac eaten up by a ridiculous theory that gave him an excuse for any excesses he desired. Anything might fit into his theory of strengthening the will. Even murder. Constant brooding upon his purpose had awakened an hysteric ecstasy in him and there were times when this ecstasy broke into an uncontrollable display. Dreeme tried to remember what he had read about these lunacies in the past. Somewhere, he was sure, he had learned that an abnormal intellectual power went hand in hand with an infant-like abandonment to symbols. For instance, one of these fanatics might display the most brilliant intellectuality in building up an elaborate and mystically logical structure and this structure might be built upon the most absurd and impossible foundation. Or, again, the mad man might reveal the most refined cunning to a certain point and then observe a cloud in the sky, a leaf on the ground, the note of a bird in the darkness and be swung abruptly from his purpose. Such men were dangerous. Any slight incident might provoke their madness.

Dreeme had an instantaneous picture of Westcott sitting alone among his books and searching through the yellowed leaves for the secret of the mastery of the will, building up impossible theories out of insane hints, drawing into the crazy net of his mind all the obsolete mysticisms of the dark ages, of the Egyptians, of the Indian fakirs, of the Satanists. He was partly sane and partly mad. One half of his brain functioned with surprising agility; the other was a dark morass of supernatural superstitions and primitive impulses. It was plain that he was employing the community for his dark purposes and it was equally plain that the community, because of some secret injection of blood, favored these impulses. These farmers were ridden by an ancient fear which Jeffrey Westcott kept alive. They did not see him often but they knew that he was there and while he was there, sitting in his lonely house and avoided by those about him, he would continue to dominate the valley. He employed some legend for his own ends and the farmers were in some way the inheritors of that legend.

Dreeme rose to his feet and proceeded out of the burned mill and down the road toward Marlborough. He had never seen the moon so white, so lustrous. It was as though the valley were bathed in a crystal liquid, as though the air were full of sparkling essences that flowed through the tree-tops and along the fronts of the farm-houses. He drew in long draughts of the clear cool air as he went his way, a little surprised at it for the day had been so hot and the sun had been so like a fountain of pale fire spraying the dry streets. As he walked along he wondered why he had ever feared Westcott. It was easy enough to handle a man like that. One had but to keep an eye on him. That was all. And yet ... Dreeme was not so sure. Westcott’s actions were unpredictable. The actions of any lunatic were unpredictable. He might be smiling and suave one minute and a ferocious beast the next. What had he desired with Deborah, for instance? In what way could she serve to strengthen that will that was apparently his only god? It was too much to believe that he desired her only as an aid to his wife in the farm-house. In some way Deborah entered into his crazy scheme. Well, he would keep his eyes open and his wits sharpened. He would stand between Westcott and Deborah to the end of time. The end of time. That was a long period but it was not long enough for him to watch over Deborah.

His mind reverted to the interview with Westcott. It was funny. Why had the farmer shown so little rage at the idea of Martha Westcott’s meeting with him? Was Martha playing her game with the connivance of her husband? Dreeme was inclined to think that this was not so, that Westcott, sure of his power over his wife, let her run to the end of the rope which he held and then pulled her back when he thought she had gone far enough. Perhaps he practised his will upon her, forcing her to do the things which he did not want her to do only for the pleasure of stopping her when he felt like it. Dreeme turned in at his gate still brooding and was about to open his door when he heard the creak-creak of Walden Slater’s rocker. He would go around the house and see if he could engage the taciturn farmer in conversation.

Walden Slater sat slumped in his chair, a corncob pipe stuck at a crazy angle in his wide mouth. He was looking at the moon.

“It’s bright tonight,” remarked Dreeme, sinking down on the stair to the little back piazza.

Walden Slater grunted, removed his pipe, and rubbed his long upper lip with a huge hand.

“Aren’t you up late?” asked Dreeme.

“Uh-huh,” said the farmer.

“It must be about eleven o’clock,” continued Dreeme.

“Ten-thirty,” said the farmer. “I just heard the kitchen clock.”

“What’s wrong?” questioned the young doctor.

Walden Slater rocked slowly. Creak-creak. Creak-creak.

“I dunno’s there’s anything wrong,” he said mildly.

“Have they done anything about Wagner?” asked Dreeme.

Walden Slater squirmed about in his chair and put his pipe down on the floor.

“Took him to Leeminster,” he said ungraciously.

Dreeme laughed aloud. He said:

“You old curmudgeon!”

Walden Slater grinned with some difficulty and then remarked:

“I’m thinking.”

Dreeme rose to his feet, still smiling.

“This is a nice social neighborhood,” he said to the moon.

Walden Slater thrust his pipe back in his mouth and resumed his inspection of the great white globe that floated in the heavens above him. Dreeme turned the corner of the house slowly.

He didn’t feel sleepy. The night was too fine, too exhilarating. It was like a heady wine, some mystic vintage that ran through his body and sharpened every impulse, every wit. It was on a night like this that the imagination might spring hawk-like into the air and bring down fair and impossible prey. Dreeme wondered how far the mind might travel through the starry immensities above him, through the glittering star-fields unplowed by Time, before it reached ... something. Humphrey Lathrop did not believe in the supernatural. He clung to the theory of the supernormal, of mysteries that might be explained as the intelligence of man lifted itself higher and higher and even of mysteries that might never be explained but which were yet felt in the intuitive senses as supernormal and not supernatural. Poor old Humphrey! The dear old frog swelling larger and larger! He sat in his cottage retired from Time and Lucinda squabbled about his frequent potations of apple-jack. He was happy, though. As happy as anybody could be who had long ago put ambition behind him and had not very much before him to expect.

Dreeme paused before his own door and half-put out a hand to turn the knob. The door was ajar. That was funny. He was sure he had closed it carefully when he started out for the burned mill. He stood looking at the door vacantly, his mind wheeling about elsewhere, wheeling through the enormous starry arc that revolved in the sky above him, wheeling through the cool and quiet expanse of the sleeping valley. Why should he go in and sleep when there was no sleep in his eyes? He was not tired. He would continue to walk until he was wearier than he was now. He turned from the door and retraced his steps along the path to the road. As he turned into the sandy stretch he heard the creak-creak of Walden Slater’s rocker. The farmer was thinking, doggedly following some faint light that glimmered before him. Poor Walden! Dreeme smiled to himself as he stood in the sandy road and listened to the faint protest of the rocking chair. He was beginning to pity everybody. Was this a testimony of his own exhilaration, a sign of his unsought superiority? He began to whistle softly some old tune that crept back into his consciousness. He didn’t know what it was but it seemed to fit the night.

The sound of the Slater front door softly opening caused him to turn his head. Who would dare to walk through that blank closed parlor stiff with its horse-hair stuffed chairs and its lumpy sofa and its colored portraits of dead and vanished Slaters? He stood by the fence, his face turned toward the door and waited. A slender form came down the steps and along the path toward him. She walked slowly, almost with diffidence, and she did not speak until she was standing close beside him. He noticed that her dress was white, her party dress undoubtedly. The moon poured its silver light over her and she stood like a white ghost in a white world, her blue eyes sparkling and her small mouth curled in a faint smile. Reaching out his hand he drew her toward him.

“I’ve been waiting by the window all evening,” she said.