Page:Tales of the Unexpected (1924).djvu/282

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280
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

happened, the brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit came out, and Mr Bessel entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did so, the silence—the brooding silence—ended; he heard the tumult of traffic and the voices of people overhead, and that strange world that is the shadow of our world—the dark and silent shadows of ineffectual desire and the shadows of lost men—vanished clean away.

He lay there for the space of about three hours before he was found. And in spite of the pain and suffering of his wounds, and of the dim damp place in which he lay; in spite of the tears—wrung from him by his physical distress—his heart was full of gladness to know that he was nevertheless back once more in the kindly world of men.

GLASGOW : W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.