“Sept. 27.—­It has been about here again—­I find evidences of its presence every day.  I watched again all last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot.  In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before.  Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep—­indeed, I hardly sleep at all.  It is terrible, insupportable!  If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.

“Oct. 3.—­I shall not go—­it shall not drive me away.  No, this is my house, my land.  God hates a coward. . . .

“Oct. 5.—­I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me—­he has a level head.  I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad.

“Oct. 7.—­I have the solution of the mystery; it came to me last night—­suddenly, as by revelation.  How simple—­how terribly simple!

“There are sounds that we cannot hear.  At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear.  They are too high or too grave.  I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top—­the tops of several trees—­and all in full song.  Suddenly—­in a moment—­at absolutely the same instant—­all spring into the air and fly away.  How?  They could not all see one another—­whole tree-tops intervened.  At no point could a leader have been visible to all.  There must have been a signal of warning or command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard.  I have observed, too, the same simultaneous flight when all were silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds—­quail, for example, widely separated by bushes—­even on opposite sides of a hill.

“It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earth between, will sometimes dive at the same instant—­all gone out of sight in a moment.  The signal has been sounded—­too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck—­who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the bass of the organ.

“As with sounds, so with colors.  At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as ‘actinic’ rays.  They represent colors—­integral colors in the composition of light—­which we are unable to discern.  The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real ’chromatic scale.’  I am not mad; there are colors that we cannot see.

“And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!”

THE INTERVAL[J]

BY VINCENT O’SULLIVAN

From The Boston Evening Transcript