favours so marvellous, what could not be won
from her by me, her patient persevering seeker?
What if there be spirits around and about,
invisible to the common eye, but whom we can
submit to our control, and what if this rod be
charged with some occult fluid, that runs
through all creation, and can be so disciplined
as to establish communication wherever life and
thought can reach to beings that live and think!
So would the mystics of old explain what
perplexes me. Am I sure that the mystics of old
duped themselves or their pupils? This, then,
this slight wand, light as a reed in my grasp,
this, then, was the instrument by which
Margrave sent his irresistible will through air and
space, and by which I smote himself, in the
midst of his tiger-like wrath, into the helplessness
of a sick man's swoon! Can the instrument
at this distance still control him; if now
meditating evil, disarm and disable his purpose?"
Involuntarily as I revolved these ideas,
I stretched forth the wand, with a concentred
energy of desire that its influence should reach
Margrave and command him. And since I knew
not his whereabout, yet was vaguely aware that,
according to any conceivable theory by which
the wand could be supposed to carry its imagined
virtues to definite goals in distant space,
it should be pointed in the direction of the
object it was intended to affect, so I slowly
moved the wand as if describing a circle, and thus,
in some point of the circle—east, west, north, or
south—the direction could not fail to be true.
Before I had performed half the circle, the wand
of itself stopped, resisting palpably the
movement of my hand to impel it onward. Had it,
then, found the point to which my will was
guiding it, obeying my will by some magnetic
sympathy never yet comprehended by any
recognised science? I know not; but I had not held
it thus fixed for many seconds, before a cold air,
well remembered, passed by me, stirring the
roots of my hair; and, reflected against the
opposite wall, stood the hateful Scin-Laeca. The
Shadow was dimmer in its light than when before
beheld, and the outline of the features was less
distinct, still it was the unmistakable lemur, or
image, of Margrave.

And a voice was conveyed to my senses, saying,
as from a great distance, and in weary yet angry
accents,

"You have summoned me! Wherefore?"
I overcame the startled shudder with which, at
first, I beheld the Shadow and heard the Voice.

"I summoned you not," said I; "I sought
but to impose upon you my will, that you should
persecute, with your ghastly influences, me and
mine no more. And now, by whatever authority
this wand bestows on me, I so adjure and
command you!"

I thought there was a sneer of disdain on the
lip through which the answer seemed to come:

"Vain and ignorant; it is but a shadow you
command. My body you have cast into a sleep,
and it knows not that the shadow is here; nor,
when it wakes, will the brain be aware of one
reminiscence of the words that you utter or the
words that you hear."

"What, then, is this shadow that simulates
the body? Is it that which in popular language
is called the soul?"

"It is not: soul is no shadow?"

"What then?"

"Ask not me. Use the wand to invoke
Intelligences higher than mine."

"And how?"

"I will tell you not. Of yourself you may learn,
if you guide the wand by your own pride of will and
desire; but in the hands of him who has learned
not the art, the wand has its dangers. Again, I
say you have summoned me! Wherefore?"

"Lying shade, I summoned thee not."

"So wouldst thou say to the demons, did they
come in their terrible wrath, when the bungler,
who knows not the springs that he moves, calls
them up unawares, and can neither control nor
dispel. Less revengeful than they, I leave thee
unharmed, and depart!"

"Stay. If, as thou sayest, no command I
address to thee—to thee, who art only the image
or shadow—can have effect on the body and
mind of the being whose likeness thou art, still
thou canst tell me what passes now in his brain.
Does it now harbour schemes against me through
the woman I love? Answer truly."

"I reply for the sleeper, of whom I am more
than a likeness, though only the shadow. His
thought speaks thus: ' I know, Allen Fenwick,
that in thee is the agent I need for achieving the
end that I seek. Through the woman thou lovest I
hope to subject thee. A grief that will harrow thy
heart is at hand: when that grief shall befal, thou
wilt welcome my coming. In me alone thy hope
will be placed—through me alone wilt thou seek
a path out of thy sorrow. I shall ask my conditions:
they will make thee my tool and my slave!'"

The Shadow waned—it was gone. I did not
seek to detain it, nor, had I sought, could I have
known by what process. But a new idea now
possessed me. This Shadow, then, that had once
so appalled and controlled me, was, by its own
confession, nothing more than a Shadow! It had
spoken of higher Intelligences; from them I
might learn what the Shadow could not reveal.
As I still held the wand firmer and firmer in my
grasp, my thoughts grew haughtier and bolder.
Could the wand, then, bring those loftier beings
thus darkly referred to before me? With that
thought, intense and engrossing, I guided the
wand towards the space, opening boundless and
blue from the casement that let in the skies. The
wand no longer resisted my hand.

In a few moments I felt the floors of the room
vibrate; the air was darkened; a vaporous hazy
cloud seemed to rise from the ground without the
casement; an awe, infinitely more deep and solemn
than that which the Scin-Laeca had caused
in its earliest apparition, curdled through my
veins, and stilled the very beat of my heart.

At that moment, I heard, without, the voice