The doctor moved just ahead of me, quickly and silently; he was making straight for the Canadian’s tent where the sides still boomed and shook as the creature of sinister life raced and tore about impatiently within.  A little distance from the door he paused and held up a hand to stop me.  We were, perhaps, a dozen feet away.

“Before I release it, you shall see for yourself,” he said, “that the reality of the werewolf is beyond all question.  The matter of which it is composed is, of course, exceedingly attenuated, but you are partially clairvoyant—­and even if it is not dense enough for normal sight you will see something.”

He added a little more I could not catch.  The fact was that the curiously strong vibrating atmosphere surrounding his person somewhat confused my senses.  It was the result, of course, of his intense concentration of mind and forces, and pervaded the entire Camp and all the persons in it.  And as I watched the canvas shake and heard it boom and flap I heartily welcomed it.  For it was also protective.

At the back of Sangree’s tent stood a thin group of pine trees, but in front and at the sides the ground was comparatively clear.  The flap was wide open and any ordinary animal would have been out and away without the least trouble.  Dr. Silence led me up to within a few feet, evidently careful not to advance beyond a certain limit, and then stooped down and signalled to me to do the same.  And looking over his shoulder I saw the interior lit faintly by the spectral light reflected from the fog, and the dim blot upon the balsam boughs and blankets signifying Sangree; while over him, and round him, and up and down him, flew the dark mass of “something” on four legs, with pointed muzzle and sharp ears plainly visible against the tent sides, and the occasional gleam of fiery eyes and white fangs.

I held my breath and kept utterly still, inwardly and outwardly, for fear, I suppose, that the creature would become conscious of my presence; but the distress I felt went far deeper than the mere sense of personal safety, or the fact of watching something so incredibly active and real.  I became keenly aware of the dreadful psychic calamity it involved.  The realisation that Sangree lay confined in that narrow space with this species of monstrous projection of himself—­that he was wrapped there in the cataleptic sleep, all unconscious that this thing was masquerading with his own life and energies—­added a distressing touch of horror to the scene.  In all the cases of John Silence—­and they were many and often terrible—­no other psychic affliction has ever, before or since, impressed me so convincingly with the pathetic impermanence of the human personality, with its fluid nature, and with the alarming possibilities of its transformations.

“Come,” he whispered, after we had watched for some minutes the frantic efforts to escape from the circle of thought and will that held it prisoner, “come a little farther away while I release it.”