her prettiness.

"But one night, Dian Tiansay's wife was not to be found, and in the
morning they discovered her lying dead in her husband's arms, and he
sitting, whistling the Song of Foolishness, for he had no longer the
power to sing it.

"Then they roasted Dian Tiansay, in the great fireplace--probably from
that selfsame 'galley-iron' which I have already mentioned. And until he
died, Dian Tiansay ceased not to whistle the Song of Foolishness, which
he could no longer sing. But afterward, 'in that room' there was often
heard at night the sound of something whistling; and there 'grew a power
in that room,' so that none dared to sleep in it. And presently, it would
seem, the King went to another castle; for the whistling troubled him.

"There you have it all. Of course, that is only a rough rendering of the
translation of the parchment. But it sounds extraordinarily quaint. Don't
you think so?"

"Yes," I said, answering for the lot. "But how did the thing grow to such
a tremendous manifestation?"

"One of those cases of continuity of thought producing a positive action
upon the immediate surrounding material," replied Carnacki. "The
development must have been going forward through centuries, to have
produced such a monstrosity. It was a true instance of Saiitii
manifestation, which I can best explain by likening it to a living
spiritual fungus, which involves the very structure of the aether-fiber
itself, and, of course, in so doing, acquires an essential control over
the 'material substance' involved in it. It is impossible to make it