Then, seeing them perched there
in a row like cats upon a roof, all dark and singularly shapeless,
their eyes like lamps, the sudden memory came back to him of Ilsé’s
terror at the sight of fire. Quick as a flash he found his matches and lit the dead leaves that lay
under the wall. Dry and withered, they caught fire at once, and the wind carried the
flame in a long line down the length of the wall, licking upwards as
it ran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of forms upon
the top melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with
a great rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the
haunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of
the deserted ground. “Ilsé!” he called feebly; “Ilsé!” for his heart ached to think that she
was really gone to the great Dance without him, and that he had lost
the opportunity of its fearful joy. Yet at the same time his relief
was so great, and he was so dazed and troubled in mind with the whole
thing, that he hardly knew what he was saying, and only cried aloud in
the fierce storm of his emotion.... The fire under the wall ran its course, and the moonlight came out
again, soft and clear, from its temporary eclipse. With one last
shuddering look at the ruined ramparts, and a feeling of horrid wonder
for the haunted valley beyond, where the shapes still crowded and flew,
he turned his face towards the town and slowly made his way in the
direction of the hotel. And as he went, a great wailing of cries, and a sound of howling,
followed him from the gleaming forest below, growing fainter and
fainter with the bursts of wind as he disappeared between the houses. VI

“It may seem rather abrupt to you, this sudden tame ending,” said
Arthur Vezin, glancing with flushed face and timid eyes at Dr. Silence
sitting there with his notebook, “but the fact is--er--from that moment
my memory seems to have failed rather. I have no distinct recollection
of how I got home or what precisely I did. “It appears I never went back to the inn at all. I only dimly recollect
racing down a long white road in the moonlight, past woods and
villages, still and deserted, and then the dawn came up, and I saw the
towers of a biggish town and so came to a station. “But, long before that, I remember pausing somewhere on the road and
looking back to where the hill-town of my adventure stood up in the
moonlight, and thinking how exactly like a great monstrous cat it lay
there upon the plain, its huge front paws lying down the two main
streets, and the twin and broken towers of the cathedral marking its
torn ears against the sky. That picture stays in my mind with the
utmost vividness to this day. “Another thing remains in my mind from that escape--namely, the sudden
sharp reminder that I had not paid my bill, and the decision I made,
standing there on the dusty highroad, that the small baggage I had left
behind would more than settle for my indebtedness. “For the rest, I can only tell you that I got coffee and bread at a
café on the outskirts of this town I had come to, and soon after found
my way to the station and caught a train later in the day. That same
evening I reached London.”

“And how long altogether,” asked John Silence quietly, “do you think
you stayed in the town of the adventure?”

Vezin looked up sheepishly. “I was coming to that,” he resumed, with apologetic wrigglings of his
body. “In London I found that I was a whole week out in my reckoning of
time. I had stayed over a week in the town, and it ought to have been
September 15th,--instead of which it was only September 10th!”

“So that, in reality, you had only stayed a night or two in the inn?”
queried the doctor. Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled upon the mat. “I must have gained time somewhere,” he said at length--“somewhere or
somehow. I certainly had a week to my credit. I can’t explain it. I can
only give you the fact.”

“And this happened to you last year, since when you have never been
back to the place?”

“Last autumn, yes,” murmured Vezin; “and I have never dared to go
back. I think I never want to.”

“And, tell me,” asked Dr. Silence at length, when he saw that the
little man had evidently come to the end of his words and had nothing
more to say, “had you ever read up the subject of the old witchcraft
practices during the Middle Ages, or been at all interested in the
subject?”

“Never!” declared Vezin emphatically. “I had never given a thought to
such matters so far as I know----”

“Or to the question of reincarnation, perhaps?”

“Never--before my adventure; but I have since,” he replied
significantly. There was, however, something still on the man’s mind that he wished
to relieve himself of by confession, yet could with difficulty bring
himself to mention; and it was only after the sympathetic tactfulness
of the doctor had provided numerous openings that he at length availed
himself of one of them, and stammered that he would like to show him
the marks he still had on his neck where, he said, the girl had touched
him with her anointed hands. He took off his collar after infinite fumbling hesitation, and lowered
his shirt a little for the doctor to see. And there, on the surface of
the skin, lay a faint reddish line across the shoulder and extending
a little way down the back towards the spine. It certainly indicated
exactly the position an arm might have taken in the act of embracing. And on the other side of the neck, slightly higher up, was a similar
mark, though not quite so clearly defined. “That was where she held me that night on the ramparts,” he whispered,
a strange light coming and going in his eyes. *       *       *       *       *

It was some weeks later when I again found occasion to consult John
Silence concerning another extraordinary case that had come under my
notice, and we fell to discussing Vezin’s story. Since hearing it,
the doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his
secretaries had discovered that Vezin’s ancestors had actually lived
for generations in the very town where the adventure came to him. Two
of them, both women, had been tried and convicted as witches, and had
been burned alive at the stake. Moreover, it had not been difficult to
prove that the very inn where Vezin stayed was built about 1700 upon
the spot where the funeral pyres stood and the executions took place. The town was a sort of headquarters for all the sorcerers and witches
of the entire region, and after conviction they were burnt there
literally by scores. “It seems strange,” continued the doctor, “that Vezin should have
remained ignorant of all this; but, on the other hand, it was not the
kind of history that successive generations would have been anxious to
keep alive, or to repeat to their children. Therefore I am inclined to
think he still knows nothing about it.