It somehow never occurred to him to ask his name, or to feel any undue wonder that one passing tourist should take so much trouble on behalf of another.  He just walked by his side, listening to his quiet words, and allowing himself to enjoy the very wonderful experience after his recent ordeal, of being helped, strengthened, blessed.  Only once, remembering vaguely something of his reading of years ago, he turned to the man beside him, after some more than usually remarkable words, and heard himself, almost involuntarily it seemed, putting the question:  “Then are you a Rosicrucian, sir, perhaps?” But the stranger had ignored the words, or possibly not heard them, for he continued with his talk as though unconscious of any interruption, and Harris became aware that another somewhat unusual picture had taken possession of his mind, as they walked there side by side through the cool reaches of the forest, and that he had found his imagination suddenly charged with the childhood memory of Jacob wrestling with an angel,—­wrestling all night with a being of superior quality whose strength eventually became his own.

“It was your abrupt conversation with the priest at supper that first put me upon the track of this remarkable occurrence,” he heard the man’s quiet voice beside him in the darkness, “and it was from him I learned after you left the story of the devil-worship that became secretly established in the heart of this simple and devout little community.”

“Devil-worship!  Here—!” Harris stammered, aghast.

“Yes—­here;—­conducted secretly for years by a group of Brothers before unexplained disappearances in the neighbourhood led to its discovery.  For where could they have found a safer place in the whole wide world for their ghastly traffic and perverted powers than here, in the very precincts—­under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and holy living?”

“Awful, awful!” whispered the silk merchant, “and when I tell you the words they used to me—­”

“I know it all,” the stranger said quietly.  “I saw and heard everything.  My plan first was to wait till the end and then to take steps for their destruction, but in the interest of your personal safety,”—­he spoke with the utmost gravity and conviction,—­“in the interest of the safety of your soul, I made my presence known when I did, and before the conclusion had been reached—­”

“My safety!  The danger, then, was real.  They were alive and—­” Words failed him.  He stopped in the road and turned towards his companion, the shining of whose eyes he could just make out in the gloom.

“It was a concourse of the shells of violent men, spiritually developed but evil men, seeking after death—­the death of the body—­to prolong their vile and unnatural existence.  And had they accomplished their object you, in turn, at the death of your body, would have passed into their power and helped to swell their dreadful purposes.”