Page:John Uri Lloyd - Etidorhpa.djvu/81

 === CHAPTER VII. ===

A WILD NIGHT.—I AM PREMATURELY AGED.
In the depths of night I was awakened by a noise made by the opening of a door, and one by one seven masked figures silently stalked into my prison. Each bore a lighted torch, and they passed me as I lay on the floor in my clothes (for I had no bedding), and ranged themselves in a line. I arose, and seated myself as directed to do, upon the only stool in the room. Swinging into a semi-circle, the weird line wound about me, and from the one seat on which I rested in the center of the room, I gazed successively upon seven pairs of gleaming eyes, each pair directed at myself; and as I turned from one to another, the black cowl of each deepened into darkness, and grew more hideous.

"Men or devils," I cried, "do your worst! Make me, if such is your will, as that sunken corpse beside which I was once seated; but cease your persecutions. I have atoned for my indiscretions a thousand fold, and this suspense is unbearable; I demand to know what is to be my doom, and I desire its fulfilment."

Then one stepped forward, facing me squarely,—the others closed together around him and me. Raising his forefinger, he pointed it close to my face, and as his sharp eyes glittered from behind the black mask, piercing through me, he slowly said: "Why do you not say brothers?"

"Horrible," I rejoined; "stop this mockery. Have I not suffered enough from your persecutions to make me reject that word as applied to yourselves? You can but murder; do your duty to your unseen masters, and end this prolonged torture!"

"Brother," said the spokesman, "you well know that the sacred rules of our order will not permit us to murder any human being. We exist to benefit humanity, to lead the wayward back across the burning desert into the pathways of the