“I pass on to the last scene.  One night about eleven o’clock, knowing that my patient’s end was near, I went up to see him, proposing to inject some strychnine to keep the heart going a little longer.  Before I reached the house I met the caretaker coming to seek me in a great fright, and asked her if her master was dead.  She answered No; but he was gone—­had got out of bed and, just as he was, barefooted, left the house, and was last seen by her grandson among the very Scotch firs where we were talking.  The lad, who was terrified out of his wits, for he thought that he beheld a ghost, had told her so.

“The moonlight was very brilliant that night, especially as fresh snow had fallen, which reflected its rays.  I was on foot, and began to search among the firs, till presently just outside of them I found the track of naked feet in the snow.  Of course I followed, calling to the housekeeper to go and wake her husband, for no one else lives near by.  The spoor proved very easy to trace across the clean sheet of snow.  It ran up the slope of a hill behind the house.

“Now, on the crest of this hill is an ancient monument of upright monoliths set there by some primeval people, known locally as the Devil’s Ring—­a sort of miniature Stonehenge in fact.  I had seen it several times, and happened to have been present not long ago at a meeting of an archaeological society when its origin and purpose were discussed.  I remember that one learned but somewhat eccentric gentleman read a short paper upon a rude, hooded bust and head that are cut within the chamber of a tall, flat-topped cromlech, or dolmen, which stands alone in the centre of the ring.

“He said that it was a representation of the Egyptian goddess, Isis, and that this place had once been sacred to some form of her worship, or at any rate to that of a Nature goddess with like attributes, a suggestion which the other learned gentlemen treated as absurd.  They declared that Isis had never travelled into Britain, though for my part I do not see why the Phoenicians, or even the Romans, who adopted her cult, more or less, should not have brought it here.  But I know nothing of such matters and will not discuss them.

“I remembered also that Mr. Holly was acquainted with this place, for he had mentioned it to me on the previous day, asking if the stones were still uninjured as they used to be when he was young.  He added also, and the remark struck me, that yonder was where he would wish to die.  When I answered that I feared he would never take so long a walk again, I noted that he smiled a little.

“Well, this conversation gave me a clue, and without troubling more about the footprints I went on as fast as I could to the Ring, half a mile or so away.  Presently I reached it, and there—­yes, there—­standing by the cromlech, bareheaded, and clothed in his night-things only, stood Mr. Holly in the snow, the strangest figure, I think, that ever I beheld.