I turned the page.  The wings of the moth on the floor began to quiver.  I read on and on, my eyes blurring under the shifting candle flame.  I read of battles and of saints, and I learned how the Great Soldan made his pact with Satan, and then I came to the Sieur de Trevec, and read how he seized the Black Priest in the midst of Saladin’s tents and carried him away and cut off his head first branding him on the forehead.  “And before he suffered,” said the Chronicle, “he cursed the Sieur de Trevec and his descendants, and he said he would surely return to St. Gildas.  ’For the violence you do to me, I will do violence to you.  For the evil I suffer at your hands, I will work evil on you and your descendants.  Woe to your children, Sieur de Trevec!’” There was a whirr, a beating of strong wings, and my candle flashed up as in a sudden breeze.  A humming filled the room; the great moth darted hither and thither, beating, buzzing, on ceiling and wall.  I flung down my book and stepped forward.  Now it lay fluttering upon the window sill, and for a moment I had it under my hand, but the thing squeaked and I shrank back.  Then suddenly it darted across the candle flame; the light flared and went out, and at the same moment a shadow moved in the darkness outside.  I raised my eyes to the window.  A masked face was peering in at me.

Quick as thought I whipped out my revolver and fired every cartridge, but the face advanced beyond the window, the glass melting away before it like mist, and through the smoke of my revolver I saw something creep swiftly into the room.  Then I tried to cry out, but the thing was at my throat, and I fell backward among the ashes of the hearth.

* * * * *

When my eyes unclosed I was lying on the hearth, my head among the cold ashes.  Slowly I got on my knees, rose painfully, and groped my way to a chair.  On the floor lay my revolver, shining in the pale light of early morning.  My mind clearing by degrees, I looked, shuddering, at the window.  The glass was unbroken.  I stooped stiffly, picked up my revolver and opened the cylinder.  Every cartridge had been fired.  Mechanically I closed the cylinder and placed the revolver in my pocket.  The book, the Chronicles of Jacques Sorgue, lay on the table beside me, and as I started to close it I glanced at the page.  It was all splashed with rain, and the lettering had run, so that the page was merely a confused blur of gold and red and black.  As I stumbled toward the door I cast a fearful glance over my shoulder.  The death’s-head moth crawled shivering on the rug.

IV

The sun was about three hours high.  I must have slept, for I was aroused by the sudden gallop of horses under our window.  People were shouting and calling in the road.  I sprang up and opened the sash.  Le Bihan was there, an image of helplessness, and Max Fortin stood beside him polishing his glasses.  Some gendarmes had just arrived from Quimperle, and I could hear them around the corner of the house, stamping, and rattling their sabres and carbines, as they led their horses into my stable.