“Rontgen rays, for a fiver!  But Bolter said nothing about seeing blue light.  Well, after three or four seances Bolter used to be very nervous and unwilling to sleep alone, so I once went with him to his one-roomed hut.  We turned into the same bed.  I was awakened later by a noise and movement in the room.  Found the door open; the full moon streaming in, making light like day, and the place full of great big black dogs—­well, anyhow there were four or five!  They were romping about, seemingly playing.  One jumped on the bed, another rubbed his muzzle on mine! (the bed was low, and I slept outside).  Now I never had anything but love for dogs of any kind, and as—­n’est-ce pas?—­love casts out fear, I simply got up, turned them all out, shut the door, and turned in again myself.  Of course my idea was that they were flesh and blood, and I allude to physical fear.

“I slept, but was anew awakened by a ghastly feeling that the blanket was being dragged and creeping off the bed.  I pulled it up again, but anew began the slow movement of descent.

“Rather surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must have dozed off, as I suppose.  Awoke, to feel it being pulled again; it was slipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk it was thrown on the floor.  Il faut dire that during all this I had glanced several times at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep.  But now alarmed I tried to wake him.  In vain, he slept like the dead; his face, always a pasty white, now like marble in the moonlight.  After some hesitation I put the blanket back on the bed and held it fast.  The pulling at once began and increased in strength, and I, by this time thoroughly alarmed, put all my strength against it, and hung on like grim death.

“To get a better hold I had taken a turn over my head (or perhaps simply to hide), when suddenly I felt a pressure outside on my body, and a movement like fingers—­they gradually approached my head.  Mad with fear I chucked off the blanket, grasped a Hand, gazed on it for one moment in silent horror, and threw it away!  No wonder, it was attached to no arm or body, it was hairy and dark coloured, the fingers were short, blunt, with long, claw-like nails, and it was minus a thumb!  Too frightened to get up I had to stop in bed, and, I suppose, fell to sleep again, after fresh vain attempts to awaken Bolter.  Next morning I told him about it.  He said several men who had thus passed the night with him had seen this hand.  ‘But,’ added he, ‘it’s lucky you didn’t have the big black dogs also.’  Tableau!

“I was to have slept again with him next night to look further into the matter, but a friend of his came from —–­ that day, so I could not renew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do.  By-the-bye, I was troubled for months after by the same feeling that the clothes were being pulled off the bed.

“And that’s the yarn of the Black Dogs and the Thumbless Hand.”