Burn, Witch, Burn!

when the favorable moment arrived, she dramatized it. Her thought became action! The doll-maker, like

you, may well have plunged the dagger-pin into her own throat-"

"You fool!"

The words came from Ricori's mouth-and yet it was so like Madame Mandilip speaking in her haunted

room and speaking through the dead lips of Laschna that I dropped back into my chair, shuddering.

Ricori was leaning over the table. His black eyes were blank, expressionless. I cried out, sharply, a panic

shaking me: "Ricori-wake-"

The dreadful blankness in his eyes flicked away; their gaze sharpened, was intent upon me. He said,

again in his own voice:

"I am awake, I am so awake-that I will listen to you no more! Instead-listen, you to me, Dr. Lowell. I

say to you-to hell with your science! I tell you this-that beyond the curtain of the material at which your

vision halts, there are forces and energies that hate us, yet which God in his inscrutable wisdom permits to

be. I tell you that these powers can reach through the veil of matter and become manifest in creatures like

the doll-maker. It is so! Witches and sorcerers hand in hand with evil! It is so! And there are powers

friendly to us which make themselves manifest in their chosen ones.

"I say to you-Madame Mandilip was an accursed witch! An instrument of the evil powers! Whore of

Satan! She burned as a witch should burn in hell-forever! I say to you that the little nurse was an

instrument of the good powers. And she is happy today in Paradise-as she shall be forever!"

He was silent, trembling with his own fervor. He touched my shoulder:

"Tell me, Dr. Lowell-tell me as truthfully as though you stood before the seat of God, believing in Him as

I believe-do those scientific explanations of yours truly satisfy you?"

I answered, very quietly:

"No, Ricori."

Nor do they.

THE END