“Of course it’s the nut steak!” And thus he tried to assure himself.  But he was badly scared all the same.

Another night, he saw some one, he took to be Hamar, peeping at him from behind the window curtains.  He threw a slipper at the figure, and the slipper went right through it.  If Hamar’s phantom had been the only thing he saw, he would not have minded much; but both he and Kelson soon began to see and hear other things.  Curtis frequently saw half-materialized forms, forms of men with cone-shaped heads and peculiarly formed limbs, stealing up the staircase in front of him, and, turning into his bedroom, vanish there.  He heard them moving about, long after he had got into bed.  Sometimes they would glide up to the bed and bend over him, and though he could never see their eyes, he could feel they were fixed mockingly on him.  Once he saw the door of his wardrobe slowly open, and a white something with a dreadful face—­half human and half animal—­steal slyly out and disappear in the wall opposite.  And once when he put out his hand to feel for the matches, they were gently thrust into his palm, whilst the walls of the room shook with laughter.

Kelson was equally tormented, though the phenomena took rather a different form.  Alone in his bedroom at night, the shape of the room would frequently change; either the walls and ceiling would recede, and recede, until they assumed the proportions of some vast chamber, full of gloom and strange shadows; or they would slowly, very slowly, close in upon him, as if it were their intention to crush him to death.  A feeling of suffocation would come over him, and he would gasp, choke, beat the air with his arms, be at the verge of losing consciousness, when there would be a loud, mocking laugh—­and the walls and ceiling would be in their proper places again.  At other times he would see strange figures on the wall—­numbers of circles, that would keep on revolving in the most bewildering fashion.  Then, suddenly, they would leave the wall and slowly approach him, increasing in circumference; and the same thing would happen, as happened with the wall and ceiling; he would undergo the whole sensation of asphyxiation, and be on the brink of swooning, when there would be a loud peal of evil, satirical laughter, and the circles would instantly disappear.

Sometimes the bedclothes would assume extraordinary shapes; sometimes the articles on his dressing-table; sometimes his clothes; and once, when he was about to put on his bedroom slippers, he found them already occupied—­occupied by icy cold feet.  Another time, when he put out his hand to take hold of a tumbler, he put it on the back of another hand—­smooth, cold and pulpy!

Hardly a night passed without some sort of manifestation happening to one or other of the trio, and even Curtis—­fat and stolid Curtis—­began to lose flesh and look harassed.

On the eve of the initiation into stage four, the three, separating for the night, retired to their respective quarters in a far from pleasant state of expectation.