And she whirled him round in the opening steps of some dance that seemed oddly and horribly familiar.  They made no sound on the stones, this strangely assorted couple.  It was all soft and stealthy.  And presently, when the air seemed to thicken like smoke, and a red glare as of flame shot through it, he was aware that some one else had joined them and that his hand the mother had released was now tightly held by the daughter.  Ilse had come in answer to the call, and he saw her with leaves of vervain twined in her dark hair, clothed in tattered vestiges of some curious garment, beautiful as the night, and horribly, odiously, loathsomely seductive.

“To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!” they cried.  “On to the Witches’ Sabbath!”

Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went out, and they were left in total darkness.  And the devil woke in his heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.

Suddenly they released his hands and he heard the voice of the mother cry that it was time, and they must go.  Which way they went he did not pause to see.  He only realised that he was free, and he blundered through the darkness till he found the stairs and then tore up them to his room as though all hell was at his heels.

He flung himself on the sofa, with his face in his hands, and groaned.  Swiftly reviewing a dozen ways of immediate escape, all equally impossible, he finally decided that the only thing to do for the moment was to sit quiet and wait.  He must see what was going to happen.  At least in the privacy of his own bedroom he would be fairly safe.  The door was locked.  He crossed over and softly opened the window which gave upon the courtyard and also permitted a partial view of the hall through the glass doors.

As he did so the hum and murmur of a great activity reached his ears from the streets beyond—­the sound of footsteps and voices muffled by distance.  He leaned out cautiously and listened.  The moonlight was clear and strong now, but his own window was in shadow, the silver disc being still behind the house.  It came to him irresistibly that the inhabitants of the town, who a little while before had all been invisible behind closed doors, were now issuing forth, busy upon some secret and unholy errand.  He listened intently.

At first everything about him was silent, but soon he became aware of movements going on in the house itself.  Rustlings and cheepings came to him across that still, moonlit yard.  A concourse of living beings sent the hum of their activity into the night.  Things were on the move everywhere.  A biting, pungent odour rose through the air, coming he knew not whence.  Presently his eyes became glued to the windows of the opposite wall where the moonshine fell in a soft blaze.  The roof overhead, and