“First, we borrowed two policemen’s dark lanterns from the station nearby, and where the superintendent and I were friendly, and as soon as it was really dusk, the landlord went up to his house for his gun.  I had the sword bayonet I have told you about; and when the landlord got back, we sat talking in my study until nearly midnight.

“Then we lit the lanterns and went upstairs.  We placed the lanterns, gun and bayonet handy on the table; then I shut and sealed the bedroom doors; afterward we took our seats, and turned off the lights.

“From then until two o’clock, nothing happened; but a little after two, as I found by holding my watch near the faint glow of the closed lanterns, I had a time of extraordinary nervousness; and I bent toward the landlord, and whispered to him that I had a queer feeling something was about to happen, and to be ready with his lantern; at the same time I reached out toward mine.  In the very instant I made this movement, the darkness which filled the passage seemed to become suddenly of a dull violet color; not, as if a light had been shone; but as if the natural blackness of the night had changed color.  And then, coming through this violet night, through this violet-colored gloom, came a little naked Child, running.  In an extraordinary way, the Child seemed not to be distinct from the surrounding gloom; but almost as if it were a concentration of that extraordinary atmosphere; as if that gloomy color which had changed the night, came from the Child.  It seems impossible to make clear to you; but try to understand it.

“The Child went past me, running, with the natural movement of the legs of a chubby human child, but in an absolute and inconceivable silence.  It was a very small Child, and must have passed under the table; but I saw the Child through the table, as if it had been only a slightly darker shadow than the colored gloom.  In the same instant, I saw that a fluctuating glimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun-barrels and the blade of the sword bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of glimmering light, floating unsupported where the tabletop should have shown solid.

“Now, curiously, as I saw these things, I was subconsciously aware that I heard the anxious breathing of the landlord, quite clear and labored, close to my elbow, where he waited nervously with his hands on the lantern.  I realized in that moment that he saw nothing; but waited in the darkness, for my warning to come true.

“Even as I took heed of these minor things, I saw the Child jump to one side, and hide behind some half-seen object that was certainly nothing belonging to the passage.  I stared, intently, with a most extraordinary thrill of expectant wonder, with fright making goose flesh of my back.  And even as I stared, I solved for myself the less important problem of what the two black clouds were that hung over a part of the table.  I think it very curious and