"The peculiar shining of all the metal objects in the cellar, had been
visible only to me. The cause, naturally I do not know; neither do I know
why I, alone, was able to see the shining."

"The Child," I asked. "Can you explain that part at all? Why _you_ didn't
see the Woman, and why _they_ didn't see the Child. Was it merely the
same Force, appearing differently to different people?"

"No," said Carnacki, "I can't explain that. But I am quite sure that the
Woman and the Child were not only two complete and different entities;
but even they were each not in quite the same planes of existence.

"To give you a root idea, however, it is held in the Sigsand MS. that a
child '_still_born' is 'Snatyched back bye thee Haggs.' This is crude;
but may yet contain an elemental truth. Yet, before I make this clearer,
let me tell you a thought that has often been made. It may be that
physical birth is but a secondary process; and that prior to the
possibility, the Mother Spirit searches for, until it finds, the small
Element--the primal Ego or child's soul. It may be that a certain
waywardness would cause such to strive to evade capture by the Mother
Spirit. It may have been such a thing as this, that I saw. I have always
tried to think so; but it is impossible to ignore the sense of repulsion
that I felt when the unseen Woman went past me. This repulsion carries
forward the idea suggested in the Sigsand MS., that a stillborn child is
thus, because its ego or spirit has been snatched back by the 'Hags.' In
other words, by certain of the Monstrosities of the Outer Circle. The
thought is inconceivably terrible, and probably the more so because it is
so fragmentary. It leaves us with the conception of a child's soul adrift
half-way between two lives, and running through Eternity from Something