My Library

perfectly immovable with fear. “What our agony would have been had the accursed things ventured to move toward us, I dare not even imagine, but they still and ever kept in the one track, moving with orderly march around that saucer on the floor. We felt and knew that they were living, actual realities, a genuine and horrid trinity of facts, and not a mere optical illusion, or the result of a play upon our fancies, mesmeric or otherwise. This opinion was confirmed by the most positive and blasting testimony, for, as they solemnly, demoniacally marched about the centre of that symbolic chart, they left a trailing streak of greenish—dead, hard, greenish ichor or pus, behind them at each revolution, and a few drops of this fell upon the Baron’s carpet. Some months afterward he and I exchanged letters on the events of that night, and he assured me that not a single chemical amongst the hundreds applied for the purpose had been of the least effect toward removing the stain. ‘The carpet has been discharged of its colors and re-dyed, yet no dye will cover those spots!’ This was not all, for on one of their rounds they nearly quitted the chart, and the Baron struck at them with his foot, whereupon one of them spirted forth a fetid liquid, which fell upon his boot, and made a mark there as if the leather had been seared with hot iron! “ ‘Talk not to me of legerdemain after this! Speak