Presently, however, he fell asleep, and when
he woke it was past midnight. He stirred the failing
fire, lifted a book from the table at his side and
looked at the title. It was Denneker's Meditations.
He opened it at random and began to read:
'Forasmuch as it is ordained of God that all flesh
hath spirit and thereby taketh on spiritual powers,
so, also, the spirit hath powers of the flesh, even
when it is gone out of the flesh and liveth as a thing
apart, as many a violence performed by wraith and
lemure sheweth. And there be who say that man is
not single in this, but the beasts have the like evil
inducement, and--'
The reading was interrupted by a shaking of the
house, as by the fall of a heavy object. The reader
flung down the book, rushed from the room and
mounted the stairs to Fleming's bed-chamber. He
tried the door, but contrary to his instructions it was
locked. He set his shoulder against it with such
force that it gave way. On the floor near the disor-
dered bed, in his night-clothes, lay Fleming, gasping
away his life.
The physician raised the dying man's head from
the floor and observed a wound in the throat. 'I
should have thought of this,' he said, believing it
suicide.
When the man was dead an examination disclosed
the unmistakable marks of an animal's fangs deeply
sunken into the jugular vein.
But there was no animal.
A RESUMED IDENTITY
1: The Review as a Form of Welcome
ONE summer night a man stood on a low hill over-
looking a wide expanse of forest and field.
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