Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 5 (1925-05).djvu/16

Rh cannot hold memories of events before your birth. It is trumping up scenes now that have been impressed on it only yesterday—things of the history books John Hodge has read. Let the astral memory have sway. That's it!"

visions so rapidly flitting by had suddenly crystallized into a picture of cameo distinctness. This one was far different from any of its predecessors and quite clearly indicated a period of remotest antiquity. Indeed, from evidence gleaned from later developments, I should judge it to be laid in the time of King Arthur.

The scene depicted the interior of a room, or cell. From the pronounced concavity of the walls and the rough stonework I concluded that it was the interior of a fairly large castle tower. The furniture reminded me strongly of pieces I had encountered in museums. The room, untenanted at first view, suddenly became occupied. So quickly had the new picture flashed into being that I was given no opportunity to see just how the emaciated man seated at the table had entered.

One look at this fellow was sufficient. The whole form showed the ravages of starvation; the cheeks were sunken, the arms wasted away. Tattered raiment hung on the feeble frame like the vestments of a scarecrow. But for all this I knew the man in such evil case to be Jack Hodge.

Dropping horrified eyes to the flagged floor, I noted another distressing fact. I was sure now that this was the interior of a prison cell, for shackled to the prisoner's leg was a massive iron ball which he was forced to roll in order to move about. The point of view shifting rapidly, I got fleeting glimpses of a small, square window set high in the concave wall and well protected by both vertical and horizontal bars. Clearly, escape from such a place was hopeless.

The prisoner was spending most of his time at the table, working with quill and parchment. Feverishly he worked, ever and anon casting anxious glances in the direction of a heavy oaken door, the one entrance. A parchment filled, he would move with laborious haste to the window and, having made the scroll into as tight a package as possible, throw it into the outer air. In most cases the wind would catch it and whirl it away. What his object could be I could not fathom, unless he were endeavoring to acquaint persons outside with his whereabouts.

Picture after picture came into being only to fade into obscurity. I judged the series to cover a considerable space of time. All the scenes showed the hapless captive ever toiling at his parchments. It could be seen that hope was failing him. Before our eyes he grew more and more feeble and emaciated.

There came a time when the oaken barrier slowly opened, and a file of men in armor entered, carrying huge swords and battleaxes. They removed the ball from the wretch's ankle and dragged him, struggling in feeble strength, down a winding stairway. At length the frenzy of despair subsided, and the man allowed himself to be led along unprotesting.

I watched the execution party—such I felt it to be—proceed down flight after flight of worn stone stairs. Such a multitude of flights there were, indeed, that I began to wonder. Why did they not reach the ground level? Downward and ever downward they went; I wished I had counted the flights. The prison cell must have been the topmost room in a veritable Tower of Babel, or—. Or had the party passed the ground level long ago? I believed the passage they now entered was one of a system of subterranean corridors.

There was nothing to confirm this belief except perhaps the rough