“I unmade the pentacle, for it must be made afresh and around the one to be protected.  Then I went out and locked the door; after which I left the house, to get certain matters, for neither ‘yarbs nor fyre nor waier’ must be used a second time.  I returned about seven thirty, and as soon as the things I had brought had been carried up to the Grey Room, I dismissed Peter for the night, just as I had done the evening before.  When he had gone downstairs, I let myself into the room, and locked and sealed the door.  I went to the place in the center of the room where all the stuff had been packed, and set to work with all my speed to construct a barrier about me and the ring.

“I do not remember whether I explained it to you.  But I had reasoned that, if the ring were in any way a ‘medium of admission,’ and it were enclosed with me in the Electric Pentacle, it would be, to express it loosely, insulated.  Do you see?  The Force, which had visible expression as a Hand, would have to stay beyond the Barrier which separates the Ab from the Normal; for the ‘gateway’ would be removed from accessibility.

“As I was saying, I worked with all my speed to get the barrier completed about me and the ring, for it was already later than I cared to be in that room ‘unprotected.’  Also, I had a feeling that there would be a vast effort made that night to regain the use of the ring.  For I had the strongest conviction that the ring was a necessity to materialization.  You will see whether I was right.

“I completed the barriers in about an hour, and you can imagine something of the relief I felt when I felt the pale glare of the Electric Pentacle once more all about me.  From then, onward, for about two hours, I sat quietly, facing the corner from which the wind came.  About eleven o’clock a queer knowledge came that something was near to me; yet nothing happened for a whole hour after that.  Then, suddenly, I felt the cold, queer wind begin to blow upon me.  To my astonishment, it seemed now to come from behind me, and I whipped ’round, with a hideous quake of fear.  The wind met me in the face.  It was blowing up from the floor close to me.  I stared down, in a sickening maze of new frights.  What on earth had I done now!  The ring was there, close beside me, where I had put it.  Suddenly, as I stared, bewildered, I was aware that there was something queer about the ring—­funny shadowy movements and convolutions.  I looked at them, stupidly.  And then, abruptly, I knew that the wind was blowing up at me from the ring.  A queer indistinct smoke became visible to me, seeming to pour upward through the ring, and mix with the moving shadows.  Suddenly, I realized that I was in more than any mortal danger; for the convoluting shadows about the ring were taking shape, and the death-hand was forming within the Pentacle.  My Goodness! do you realize it!  I had brought the ‘gateway’ into the pentacles, and the brute was coming through—­pouring into the material world, as gas might pour out from the mouth of a pipe.