"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote that piece tonight," he observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now. She might be anxious."

Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed some quality of courage----?

That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money and popularity went to the publisher under the t.i.tle, "Shadows of Hills." Of course no one connected the allusion. The general interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.

But--in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain itself?

I did not know. I do not know, now.

CHAPTER XI

"If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the Other World."--ONEIROCRITICA ACHMETIS.

In the morning I drove down to New York. There were affairs demanding attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the ma.n.u.script out of reach of the Thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened with that instinct strong within me.

The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely driving through the friendly, crowded streets was an exhilaration. The practical employment of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening I turned toward Connecticut with a feeling of leaving home behind me. But I would not stay away from the house for a night, risking that Desire Mich.e.l.l might come and find me missing. She might believe I had been seized by cowardice and deserted. She might never return.

I will not deny that I had lied to her. There was no intention in me of accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to s.n.a.t.c.h her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the wholesome sunlight where Phillida flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. But it was plain that I must tread warily. Once frightened away, how could she be found? Her home, her history, even her face, were unknown to me. Tracing her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried, and failed. Of her connection with the Dark Thing I refused to think too deeply. Her connection with me must come first.

It was not until I pa.s.sed the cottage of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely in the starlight, where the road made an angle toward the farm, that I recalled our talk in her "best room."

"_The Mich.e.l.l family always owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Mich.e.l.l went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years ago and died there----_"

My lady of the night was Desire Mich.e.l.l. A clue?

"_He never married, so the family's run out._"

It was damp here in the hollow where the road dipped down. A chill ran coldly over me.

Arrived at the garage which had taken the place of our tumble-down barn, I put the car away as quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I pa.s.sed through the last village, and our household was asleep. Moving without unnecessary noise, I crossed to the house. Bagheera, the cat, padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs while I stooped to put the latch-key in the lock.

As the key slid in place, I heard the waterfall over the dam abruptly change the sound of its flow, swelling and accelerating as when a gust of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the brink. But there was no wind. Immediately followed that sound from the lake which I can liken to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing, or the suck of a thick body drawing itself from a bed of mud. The cat thrust himself violently between my feet and pressed against the house-door uttering a whimpering mew of urgency. Startled, I looked in the direction of the lake.

At this distance it showed as a mere expanse of darkness, only the reflection of a star here and there revealing the surface as water. What else could be shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying of them; and turned the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall when the door opened wide enough to admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed the door behind us both.

Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night privileges. Did Phillida allow him in the house, or not? After an instant's consideration, I bent and picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He should spend the night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his part.

Until we reached my room! On its threshold I felt his body stiffen; his yellow eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I reflected, amused, as I switched on the lights.

"All right, Bagheera," I spoke soothingly, and put him upon the rug.

He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail lashing from side to side after the fashion of a miniature panther. When I stooped to stroke him, he eluded my hand. In a gliding run, body crouched, ears flattened, he sped toward the doorway, was through it and gone.

Well, I decided, he could not be pursued all through the house. It would be easier to explain him to Phillida next morning. I was tired; pleasantly tired. The day had been filled with the enthusiasm and congratulations of my a.s.sociates, with conferences and plans for launching the new music via theatres and advertising. It ought to "go big," they a.s.sured me. In my optimism of mood, I wondered if I had not already driven off the Dark Thing, since the girl had come to me the night past without It appearing before or afterward. Perhaps, woman-timid, she exaggerated the danger and It had retreated after the second failure to overpower me.

I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing would disturb my rest this night.

Stillness enveloped me, absolute, desolate. Silence contained me. Yet the thought of another scorched against my understanding in a burning communication of intelligence.

"Man," It commanded, "I am here. Fear!"

And I knew that which was my body did fear to the point of death, but that which was myself stood up in revolt.

"Crouch," It bade. "Crouch, pygmy, and beg. Fear! The blood crawls in the veins, the heart checks, the nerves shrink and wither--man, your life wanes thin and faint. Down--shall your race affront mine?"

My heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept a sluggish current. But there was another force that stiffened to resistance, and gathered itself to compact strength within me.

"No," my thought refused the dark intelligence. "I am not yours. Command your own, not me."

"Weakling, you have touched that which is mine. Into my path you have dared step. Back--for in my breath you die!"

The air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous. With more and more difficulty my heart labored. Confused memories came to me of men found dead in their beds in haunted rooms. Would morning find me so? Better that way than to yield to the Thing! Better----

I struggled erect; or fancied so.

Now I saw myself as one who stood with folded arms fronting a breach in a colossal wall. Huge, immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown distances, dully glistening like gray ice, unbroken save in this place. The gray strand on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall.

Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when he draws near the supernatural; the ancient fear.

I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from me, and fronted my enemy who pressed me hard.

The Thing was at the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the Barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its hate beat upon me. From It emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp and mold.

"Puny earth-dweller, lost here," Its menace breathed, "what keeps you from destruction? For you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagram fixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespa.s.s is death.

Die, then."

Only my will held It from me, and I felt that will reel in sickened bewilderment. I had no strength to answer, only the steadfast instinct to oppose.

The Thing did not pa.s.s. There in the breach It ravened for me, thrust Itself toward me, pressed against the thin veil of separation between us. I saw nothing, yet knew where It raised Itself, gigantic in formlessness more dreadful than any shape. Its whispered threats broke against me like an evil surf.

"Man, the prey is mine. Would you challenge me? The woman is mine by the pact of centuries. Save yourself. Escape."

The woman? Startled wonder filled me. Was I then fighting for Desire Mich.e.l.l?

Out of the air I was answered as if her voice had spoken; certainty came to grip me as if with her small hands. She had no help but in me. If I fell, she fell. If I stood firm----? Exultant resolve flared strong and high within me. My will to protect leaped forward.

The Thing shrank. It dwindled back through the gap in the Barrier. But as It fled, a last venomous message drifted to me:

"Again! And again! Tire but once, pygmy----!"

I was sitting up in bed in my lighted room, my fingers clutching the chain of the lamp beside me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond my window? Or was I still dreaming?

I was trembling with cold, drenched as with water so that my relaxing hand made a wet mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much might have been caused by nightmare. But what sane man had nightmares like these?