So he stood in the black darkness, knowing that he could not turn, with
the horror on him so heavy that he sweated as he told me of it, and with
the knowledge that something was approaching under the trees without
sound of step or breathing--he did not know whether it was man or beast
or fiend, he only knew that it was approaching. Yet he could not pray or
cry out.

Then he was aware that it had entered the little space where he stood,
and was even now within a hand's grasp. Yet he could not lift his hands
to ward it off, or to pray to God, or to bless himself.

Then he perceived that the thing--_negotium perambulans in tenebris_
["the Business that walketh about in the dark" (Ps. xc. 6.)]--was
formless, without hands to strike or mouth to bite him with, and that it
was all about him now, closing upon him. If there had been aught to
touch his body, wet lips to kiss his face, or fiery eyes to look into
his own, he would not have feared it with a thousandth part of the fear
that he had. It was that there was no shape or face, and that it sought
not his body but his soul. And when he understood that he gave a loud
cry and awoke, and knew, as in a mystery, that it was no dream, but
that he was indeed come to the place that he had seen, and that this
_negotium_ was at his soul's heart. [There is either an omission here
in the translation of Sir John's original MS., or else the transcriber
has dashed his pen down in horror, or sought to produce an impression
of it.]....

I find it impossible, my children, to make you understand in what state
he was; he could not make even me understand. I can only set down a
little of what he said.