above his head. He would get into bed again. He was dog-tired--yes, most
distinctly bed!

Then he stopped short, listening, hastily knelt down by the window and
again leaned out. For once more he heard horses coming up from the shore,
across the garden, into and through the house, hustling and trampling one
another as they shied away from the whip.--There were laggards too--one
stumbled, rolled over in the sand, got on its feet after a nasty
struggle, and tottered onward dead lame. Another fell in its tracks and
lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.

The sounds were so descriptive, so explicit and the impression produced
on Tom Verity's mind so vivid that, carried away by indignation, he found
himself saying out loud:

"Curse them, the brutes, the cowardly brutes, mishandling their cattle
like that! They"--

And he stopped confounded, as it came home to him that throughout the
course of this cruel drama he had seen nothing, literally nothing, though
he had heard so convincingly much. A shiver ran down his spine and he
broke into a sweat, for he knew beyond question or doubt not so much as a
shadow,--let alone anything material--had breasted the sea-wall, passed
over the smooth level turf, or entered--how should it?--the house.

The garden lay outspread before him, calm, uninvaded by any alien being,
man or animal. The great ilex trees were immobile, fixed as the eternal
stars overhead. And he shrank in swift protest, almost in terror, being
called on thus to face things apparently super-normal, forces unexplored
and uncharted, defying reason, giving the lie to ordinary experience and