was filled with great masses of black cloud which, driven rapidly across
the star-fields by winds unfelt on the earth and momentarily altering
their fantastic forms, seemed instinct with a life and activity of their
own and endowed with awful powers of evil, to the exercise of which they
might at any time set their malignant will.

An observer standing, at this time, at the corner of Paradise avenue and
Great White Throne walk in Sorrel Hill cemetery would have seen a human
figure moving among the graves toward the Superintendent's residence.
Dimly and fitfully visible in the intervals of thinner gloom, this
figure had a most uncanny and disquieting aspect. A long black cloak
shrouded it from neck to heel. Upon its head was a slouch hat, pulled
down across the forehead and almost concealing the face, which was
further hidden by a half-mask, only the beard being occasionally visible
as the head was lifted partly above the collar of the cloak. The man
wore upon his feet jack-boots whose wide, funnel-shaped legs had settled
down in many a fold and crease about his ankles, as could be seen
whenever accident parted the bottom of the cloak. His arms were
concealed, but sometimes he stretched out the right to steady himself by
a headstone as he crept stealthily but blindly over the uneven ground.
At such times a close scrutiny of the hand would have disclosed in the
palm the hilt of a poniard, the blade of which lay along the wrist,
hidden in the sleeve. In short, the man's garb, his movements, the
hour--everything proclaimed him a reporter.

But what did he there?

On the morning of that day the editor of the _Daily Malefactor_ had
touched the button of a bell numbered 216 and in response to the summons
Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, reporter, had been shot into the room out of an