At first, his supernatural visitors were of a unfavorable but not a ghastly character.

No. 1 was a judge who used to rise through the floor, and sit half in and half out of the wall, with a tremendous flow of horse-hair, a furrowed face, a vertical chasm between the temples, and a strike-me-off-the-rolls eye gleaming with diabolical fire from under a gray, shaggy eyebrow.

No. 2 was a policeman, who came in through the window, and stood imperturbable, all in blue, with a pair of handcuffs, and a calm eye, and a disagreeable absence of effort or emotion—­an inevitable-looking policeman.

But as Crawley went deeper in crime and brandy, blood-boltered figures, erect corpses, with the sickening signs of violence in every conceivable form, used to come and blast his sight and arrest the glass on its way to his lips, and make his songs and the boisterous attempts at mirth of his withered heart die in a quaver and a shiver of fear and despair.  And at this period of our tale these horrors had made room for a phantom more horrible still to such a creature as Crawley.  The air would seem to thicken into sulfurous smoke, and then to clear, and then would come out clearer and clearer, more and more awful, a black figure with hoof and horns and tail, eyes like red-hot carbuncles, teeth a chevaux-de-frise of white-hot iron, and an appalling grin.*

* The god Pan colored black by the early Christians.

CHAPTER LXXII.

THE party, consisting of Jacky, Jem, Robinson and George, had traversed about one half the bush, when a great heavy crow came wheeling and cackling over their heads, and then joined a number more who were now seen circling over a gum-tree some hundred yards distant.

“Let us go and see what that is,” said Jem.

Jacky grinned, and led the way.  They had not gone very far when another great black bird rose so near their feet as to make them jump, and peering through the bushes they saw a man lying on his back.  His arm was thrown in an easy, natural way round his gun, but at a second glance it was plain the man was dead.  The crows had ripped his clothes to ribbons with their tremendous beaks, and lacerated the flesh and picked out the eyes.

They stepped a few paces from this sight.  There was no sign of violence on the body.

“Poor fellow!” said Jem.  “How did he come by his end, I wonder?” And he stretched forward and peered with pity and curiosity mingled.

“Lost in the bush!” said Robinson, very solemnly.  And he and George exchanged a meaning look.

“What is that for?” said George, angrily, to Jacky—­“grinning in sight of a dead body?”

“White fellow stupid fellow,” was all Jacky’s reply.

The men now stepped up to the body to examine it; not that they had much hope of discovering who it was, but still they knew it was their duty for the sake of his kindred to try and find out.