Somewhere above the tree-tops climbed the lane which joined the main
road to Penzance, but all that had become immeasurably distant. The
years that had passed since last I turned in at the well-known gate
faded like a frosty breath, and vanished in this warm, soft air. There
were law-courts somewhere in memory’s dull book which, if I cared to
turn the pages, would tell me that I had made a name and a great income
there. But the dull book was closed now, for I was back in Polearn, and
the spell was woven around me again. And if Polearn was unchanged, so too was Aunt Hester, who met me at the
door. Dainty and china-white she had always been, and the years had
not aged but only refined her. As we sat and talked after dinner she
spoke of all that had happened in Polearn in that score of years, and
yet somehow the changes of which she spoke seemed but to confirm the
immutability of it all. As the recollection of names came back to me, I
asked her about the quarry-house and Mr. Dooliss, and her face gloomed
a little as with the shadow of a cloud on a spring day. “Yes, Mr. Dooliss,” she said, “poor Mr. Dooliss, how well I remember
him, though it must be ten years and more since he died. I never wrote
to you about it, for it was all very dreadful, my dear, and I did not
want to darken your memories of Polearn. Your uncle always thought that
something of the sort might happen if he went on in his wicked, drunken
ways, and worse than that, and though nobody knew exactly what took
place, it was the sort of thing that might have been anticipated.”

“But what more or less happened, Aunt Hester?” I asked. “Well, of course I can’t tell you everything, for no one knew it. But
he was a very sinful man, and the scandal about him at Newlyn was
shocking. And then he lived, too, in the quarry-house.... I wonder
if by any chance you remember a sermon of your uncle’s when he got
out of the pulpit and explained that panel in the altar-rails, the
one, I mean, with the horrible creature rearing itself up outside the
lych-gate?”

“Yes, I remember perfectly,” said I. “Ah. It made an impression on you, I suppose, and so it did on all who
heard him, and that impression got stamped and branded on us all when
the catastrophe occurred. Somehow Mr. Dooliss got to hear about your
uncle’s sermon, and in some drunken fit he broke into the church and
smashed the panel to atoms. He seems to have thought that there was
some magic in it, and that if he destroyed that he would get rid of
the terrible fate that was threatening him. For I must tell you that
before he committed that dreadful sacrilege he had been a haunted man:
he hated and feared darkness, for he thought that the creature on the
panel was on his track, but that as long as he kept lights burning
it could not touch him. But the panel, to his disordered mind, was
the root of his terror, and so, as I said, he broke into the church
and attempted--you will see why I said ‘attempted’--to destroy it. It
certainly was found in splinters next morning, when your uncle went
into church for matins, and knowing Mr. Dooliss’s fear of the panel,
he went across to the quarry-house afterwards and taxed him with its
destruction. The man never denied it; he boasted of what he had done. There he sat, though it was early morning, drinking his whisky. “‘I’ve settled your Thing for you,’ he said, ‘and your sermon too. A
fig for such superstitions.’

“Your uncle left him without answering his blasphemy, meaning to go
straight into Penzance and give information to the police about this
outrage to the church, but on his way back from the quarry-house he
went into the church again, in order to be able to give details about
the damage, and there in the screen was the panel, untouched and
uninjured. And yet he had himself seen it smashed, and Mr. Dooliss had
confessed that the destruction of it was his work. But there it was,
and whether the power of God had mended it or some other power, who
knows?”

This was Polearn indeed, and it was the spirit of Polearn that made me
accept all Aunt Hester was telling me as attested fact. It had happened
like that. She went on in her quiet voice. “Your uncle recognised that some power beyond police was at work, and
he did not go to Penzance or give information about the outrage, for
the evidence of it had vanished.”

A sudden spate of scepticism swept over me. “There must have been some mistake,” I said. “It hadn’t been broken....”

She smiled. “Yes, my dear, but you have been in London so long,” she said. “Let
me, anyhow, tell you the rest of my story. That night, for some reason,
I could not sleep. It was very hot and airless; I dare say you will
think that the sultry conditions accounted for my wakefulness. Once and
again, as I went to the window to see if I could not admit more air, I
could see from it the quarry-house, and I noticed the first time that
I left my bed that it was blazing with lights. But the second time I
saw that it was all in darkness, and as I wondered at that, I heard a
terrible scream, and the moment afterwards the steps of someone coming
at full speed down the road outside the gate. He yelled as he ran;
‘Light, light!’ he called out. ‘Give me light, or it will catch me!’ It
was very terrible to hear that, and I went to rouse my husband, who was
sleeping in the dressing-room across the passage. He wasted no time,
but by now the whole village was aroused by the screams, and when he
got down to the pier he found that all was over. The tide was low, and
on the rocks at its foot was lying the body of Mr. Dooliss. He must
have cut some artery when he fell on those sharp edges of stone, for
he had bled to death, they thought, and though he was a big burly man,
his corpse was but skin and bones. Yet there was no pool of blood round
him, such as you would have expected. Just skin and bones as if every
drop of blood in his body had been sucked out of him!”

She leaned forward. “You and I, my dear, know what happened,” she said, “or at least
can guess. God has His instruments of vengeance on those who bring
wickedness into places that have been holy. Dark and mysterious are His
ways.”

Now what I should have thought of such a story if it had been told me
in London I can easily imagine. There was such an obvious explanation:
the man in question had been a drunkard, what wonder if the demons of
delirium pursued him? But here in Polearn it was different. “And who is in the quarry-house now?” I asked. “Years ago the
fisher-boys told me the story of the man who first built it and of his
horrible end. And now again it has happened. Surely no one has ventured
to inhabit it once more?”

I saw in her face, even before I asked that question, that somebody had
done so. “Yes, it is lived in again,” said she, “for there is no end to the
blindness.... I don’t know if you remember him. He was tenant of the
vicarage many years ago.”

“John Evans,” said I. “Yes. Such a nice fellow he was too. Your uncle was pleased to get so
good a tenant.