sensation, blotches of white meat that lifted and fell with a maddening regularity. He was not sure that the humming he heard was more than the blood pounding in his eardrums and throbbing in his temples. Yet it seemed to be more than that, to be, in fact, an ominous and steadily-increasing warning of the approach of mysterious and frightful things. It would not have surprised him to see a host of devils and witches suddenly sweep through the treetops screaming and laughing to one another. He could imagine them calling to one another gross phrases, turning their red-rimmed eyes downward at him, pointing with long-nailed hands and bursting into gales of infernal laughter. Then he realized that his imagination was slipping from his control and he strove to concentrate on Deborah, to save himself from his own madness through the memory of her. He pitched forward over oozy hummocks. The fierce thorns of clutching vines ripped along his legs and arms. Malicious branches lashed murderously at his face. Water sucked and gurgled about his naked feet. But he pressed forward half-blindly, hardly conscious of the direction in which he was proceeding, knowing only that Walden Slater’s shoulder struck against his from time to time, and that a desperate and imperative necessity was urging them into the depths of the marshy wood. Some small beast scurried beneath his feet, and he screamed at the nervous tension of the moment. He heard laboring branches crack and groan above his head and the hollow sound where a dislodged stone rolled down an incline and landed in a huge puddle. The humming had developed into a roar about him. It was so dark that he could not see Walden Slater. He could not even hear the heavy thud of the farmer’s boots. Suddenly he became conscious that a devastating delirium of fear was engulfing him and rendering him incapable of any action, “This is horrible!” he sobbed in his throat. He stopped dead in his tracks, straightened his body, and gazed upward until the faint glow of the stormy sky pierced his dulled eyesight. It came slowly, a gradual light, a milky hue against which the silhouettes of the black branches cut sharply. Gazing steadfastly he strove to quiet the tempest that shook his mind. He thought for a moment that he could see small winking lights scurrying across the surface of that milky sky, but, forcing himself to gaze fixedly, he decided that these lights were no more than optical illusions or the small sparks that rise in tired and overstrained eyes. His heart was beating like a loud trip-hammer and he pressed one hand against it tightly. Standing so for several seconds he experienced a slowing of his nervous faculties, a sensation of again being master of himself and not the victim of an unreasonable fear that was, perhaps, self-implanted by a too imaginative mind. It was with actual surprise that he felt Walden Slater’s sturdy arm about his shoulder urging him forward. Clearheaded now he resumed the laborious toil of the journey.
This is New England, he thought. This is the tired land of forgotten pioneer enterprises. This is the land of machinery and shoe factories and canned goods and ice-skates. It is everything that is material and dispiriting and “up-to-date” and unlovely. It is the land of lean farms and thin mouths, too. It is a land of humming commercial cities, of great businesses, of the New Day. But it is more than this, as well. How if all this glittering commercial civilization is no more than a huge shell, an incrustation of years, beneath which lurk the old pagan madnesses that were corollaries of the Puritan repression? How if the ancient Dionysiac urge did not perish but remained like an ominous monster in a deep cavern biding its time and waiting its day? Suppose that the May Pole of Merry Mount and the Witches’ Sabbats of Salem were to be reborn with disastrous consequences because of their long suppression? Might not the humming wind be saying, “The day is coming! The Black Man is coming! The May Pole of Merry Mount is to be reared again on the site of the factory! The witches and warlocks are to rule! The cities are to be laid waste for this huge shell of civilization is no more than a pasteboard affair and it is only the ancient furies and instincts that count in the long run!” Dreeme permitted his imagination to go to whatever lengths it pleased as he plunged through the forest with Walden Slater. He was fully aware of the fancifulness and impossibility of his thoughts, but they seemed to act as a release-valve for the feelings that boiled within him.
Walden Slater suddenly clutched his wrist in a huge gripping hand. He drew the young doctor to one side, and as he did so Dreeme became aware of the tiny bobbing jewel of light before them, a spark of yellow that disappeared behind trees only to reappear again. The farmer did not slack his pace but kept on rapidly, but Dreeme noted that there was a tenseness in his walk. The light bobbed before them and they gained on it. It grew in dimensions and before they had traveled many rods Dreeme, by straining his eyes, perceived that it was a lantern carried by a dark figure. He grew aware at the same time that other figures were slipping noiselessly through the trees before them. He even heard the subdued mutter of a voice somewhere to the right of him. Still holding the young doctor by the wrist, Walden Slater made a detour to the left and they circled the bobbing lantern. Keeping their eyes turned toward the lantern they drew abreast of it, passed it, and then Walden Slater uttered an exclamation as he bumped into a sluggishly moving figure in the shadow of a huge overarching tree. “At Dagon,” said a low voice. An inspiration came to
