other, his manner somehowexpressing the sense of awe he contrived to keep out of his voice, "butmy sister unfortunately did, and her present state I believe to beentirely due to the shock it gave to her nerves. She never can bebrought to refer to it, naturally, and I am even inclined to think thatthe memory has mercifully been permitted to vanish from her mind. Butshe spoke of it at the time as a face swept by flame--blasted."
John Silence looked up from his contemplation of the map, but with theair of one who wished to listen, not to speak, and presently ColonelWragge went on with his account. He stood on the mat, his broadshoulders hiding most of the mantelpiece.
"They all centred about this particular plantation, these stories. Thatwas to be expected, for the people here are as superstitious as Irishpeasantry, and though I made one or two examples among them to stop thefoolish talk, it had no effect, and new versions came to my ears everyweek. You may imagine how little good dismissals did, when I tell youthat the servants dismissed themselves. It was not the house servants,but the men who worked on the estate outside. The keepers gave noticeone after another, none of them with any reason I could accept; theforesters refused to enter the wood, and the beaters to beat in it. Wordflew all over the countryside that Twelve Acre Plantation was a place tobe avoided, day or night.
"There came a point," the Colonel went on, now well in his swing, "whenI felt compelled to make investigations on my own account. I could notkill the thing by ignoring it; so I collected and analysed the storiesat first hand. For this Twelve Acre Wood, you will see by the map, comesrather near home. Its lower end, if you will look, almost touches theend of the back lawn, as I will show you tomorrow, and its dense growthof pines forms the chief protection the house enjoys from the east windsthat blow up from the sea. And in olden days, before my brotherinterfered with it and frightened all the game away, it was one of thebest pheasant coverts on the whole estate."
"And what form, if I may ask, did this interference take?" asked Dr.Silence.
"In detail, I cannot tell you, for I do not know--except that Iunderstand it was the subject of his frequent differences with the headkeeper; but during the last two years of his life, when he gave uptravelling and settled down here, he took a special interest in thiswood, and for some unaccountable reason began to build a low stone wallaround it. This wall was never finished, but you shall see the ruinstomorrow in the daylight."
"And the result of your investigations--these stories, I mean?" thedoctor broke in, anxious to keep him to the main issues.
"Yes, I'm coming to that," he said slowly, "but the wood first, for thiswood out of which they grew like mushrooms has nothing in any waypeculiar about it. It is very thickly grown, and rises to a clearer partin the centre, a sort of mound where there is a circle of largeboulders--old Druid stones, I'm told. At another place there's a smallpond. There's nothing distinctive about it that I could mention--just anordinary pine-wood, a very ordinary pine-wood--only the trees are a bittwisted in the trunks, some of 'em, and very dense. Nothing more.
"And the stories? Well, none of them had anything to do with my poorbrother, or the keeper, as you might have expected; and they were allodd--such odd things, I mean, to invent or imagine. I never could makeout how these people got such notions into their heads."
He paused a moment to relight his cigar.
"There's no regular path through it," he resumed, puffing vigorously,"but the fields round it are constantly used, and one of the gardenerswhose cottage lies over that way declared he often saw moving lights init at night, and luminous shapes like globes of fire over the tops ofthe trees, skimming and floating, and making a soft hissing sound--mostof 'em said that, in fact--and another man saw shapes flitting in andout among the trees, things that were neither men nor animals, and allfaintly luminous. No one ever pretended to see human forms--alwaysqueer, huge things they could not properly describe. Sometimes the wholewood was lit up, and one fellow--he's still here and you shall seehim--has a most circumstantial yarn about having seen great stars lyingon the ground round the edge of the wood at regular intervals--"
"What kind of stars?" put in John Silence sharply, in a sudden way thatmade me start.
"Oh, I don't know quite; ordinary stars, I think he said, only verylarge, and apparently blazing as though the ground was alight. He wastoo terrified to go close and examine, and he has never seen themsince."
He stooped and stirred the fire into a welcome blaze--welcome for itsblaze of light rather than for its heat. In the room there was already astrange pervading sensation of warmth that was oppressive in its effectand far from comforting.
"Of course," he went on, straightening up again on the mat, "this wasall commonplace enough--this seeing lights and figures at night. Most ofthese fellows drink, and imagination and terror between them may accountfor almost anything. But others saw things in broad daylight. One of thewoodmen, a sober, respectable man, took the shortcut home to his middaymeal, and swore he was followed the whole length of the wood bysomething that never showed itself, but dodged from tree to tree, alwayskeeping out of sight, yet solid enough to make the branches sway and thetwigs snap on the ground. And it made a noise, he declared--butreally"--the speaker stopped and gave a short laugh--"it's tooabsurd--"
"_Please!_" insisted the doctor; "for it is these small details thatgive me the best clues always."
"--it made a crackling noise, he said, like a bonfire. Those werehis very words: like the crackling of a bonfire," finished the soldier,with a repetition of his short laugh.
"Most interesting," Dr. Silence observed gravely. "Please omit nothing."
"Yes," he went on, "and it was soon after that the fires began--thefires in the wood. They started mysteriously burning in the patches ofcoarse white grass that cover the more open parts of the plantation. Noone ever actually saw them start, but many, myself among the number,have seen them burning and smouldering. They are always small andcircular in shape, and for all the world like a picnic fire. The headkeeper has a dozen explanations, from sparks flying out of the housechimneys to the sunlight focusing through a dewdrop, but none of them, Imust admit, convince me as being in the least likely or probable. Theyare most singular, I consider, most singular, these mysterious fires,and I am glad to say that they come only at rather long intervals andnever seem to spread.
"But the keeper had other queer stories as well, and about things thatare verifiable. He declared that no life ever willingly entered theplantation; more, that no life existed in it at all. No birds nested inthe trees, or flew into their shade. He set countless traps, but nevercaught so much as a rabbit or a weasel. Animals avoided it, and morethan once he had picked up dead creatures round the edges that bore noobvious signs of how they had met their death.
"Moreover, he told me one extraordinary tale about his retriever chasingsome invisible creature across the field one day when he was out withhis gun. The dog suddenly pointed at something in the field at his feet,and then gave chase, yelping like a mad thing. It followed its imaginaryquarry to the borders of the wood, and then went in--a thing he hadnever known it to do before. The moment it crossed the edge--it isdarkish in there even in daylight--it began fighting in the mostfrenzied and terrific fashion. It made him afraid to interfere, he said.And at last, when the dog came out, hanging its tail down and panting,he found something like white hair stuck to its jaws, and brought it toshow me. I tell you these details because--"
"They are important, believe me," the doctor stopped him. "And you haveit still, this hair?" he asked.
"It disappeared in the oddest way," the Colonel explained. "It wascurious looking stuff, something like asbestos, and I sent it to beanalysed by the local chemist. But either the man got wind of itsorigin, or else he didn't like the look of it for some reason, becausehe returned it to me and said it was neither animal, vegetable, normineral, so far as he could make out, and he didn't wish to haveanything to do with it. I put it away in paper, but a week later, onopening the package--it was gone! Oh, the stories are simply
endless. Icould tell you hundreds all on the same lines."
"And personal experiences of your own, Colonel Wragge?" asked JohnSilence earnestly, his manner showing the greatest possible interest andsympathy.
The soldier gave an almost imperceptible start. He looked distinctlyuncomfortable.
"Nothing, I think," he said slowly, "nothing--er--I should like to relyon. I mean nothing I have the right to speak of, perhaps--yet."
His mouth closed with a snap. Dr. Silence, after waiting a little to seeif he would add to his reply, did not seek to press him on the point.
"Well," he resumed presently, and as though he would speakcontemptuously, yet dared not, "this sort of thing has