* * * * *

When Harris came to himself he felt cold.  He was lying under the open sky, and the cool air of field and forest was blowing upon his face.  He sat up and looked about him.  The memory of the late scene was still horribly in his mind, but no vestige of it remained.  No walls or ceiling enclosed him; he was no longer in a room at all.  There were no lamps turned low, no cigar smoke, no black forms of sinister worshippers, no tremendous grey Figure hovering beyond the windows.

Open space was about him, and he was lying on a pile of bricks and mortar, his clothes soaked with dew, and the kind stars shining brightly overhead.  He was lying, bruised and shaken, among the heaped-up debris of a ruined building.

He stood up and stared about him.  There, in the shadowy distance, lay the surrounding forest, and here, close at hand, stood the outline of the village buildings.  But, underfoot, beyond question, lay nothing but the broken heaps of stones that betokened a building long since crumbled to dust.  Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and that great wooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, made lines through the general debris.  He stood, then, among the ruins of a burnt and shattered building, the weeds and nettles proving conclusively that it had lain thus for many years.

The moon had already set behind the encircling forest, but the stars that spangled the heavens threw enough light to enable him to make quite sure of what he saw.  Harris, the silk merchant, stood among these broken and burnt stones and shivered.

Then he suddenly became aware that out of the gloom a figure had risen and stood beside him.  Peering at him, he thought he recognised the face of the stranger at the railway inn.

“Are you real?” he asked in a voice he hardly recognised as his own.

“More than real—­I’m friendly,” replied the stranger; “I followed you up here from the inn.”

Harris stood and stared for several minutes without adding anything.  His teeth chattered.  The least sound made him start; but the simple words in his own language, and the tone in which they were uttered, comforted him inconceivably.

“You’re English too, thank God,” he said inconsequently.  “These German devils—­” He broke off and put a hand to his eyes.  “But what’s become of them all—­and the room—­and—­and—­” The hand travelled down to his throat and moved nervously round his neck.  He drew a long, long breath of relief.  “Did I dream everything—­everything?” he said distractedly.

He stared wildly about him, and the stranger moved forward and took his arm.  “Come,” he said soothingly, yet with a trace of command in the voice, “we will move away from here.  The high-road, or even the woods will be more to your taste, for we are standing now on one of the most haunted—­and most terribly haunted—­spots of the whole world.”

He guided his companion’s stumbling footsteps over the broken masonry until they reached the path, the nettles stinging their hands, and Harris feeling his way like a man in a dream.  Passing through the twisted iron railing they reached the path, and thence made their way to the road, shining white in the night.  Once safely out of the ruins, Harris collected himself and turned to look back.