Edgar Jepson

“ I caught no whole sentence only a word now and again. Twice I caught the word Abyssi; and it seemed to me likely that he was making his prayer to the powers of the Abyss. Now and again the voices of the others rose as a chorus.
It was a long ritual and I could not follow it. Woodfell was not the chief celebrant of the rite all the while. The others seemed to take his place in turn. Sometimes the celebrant was out of my sight close to the cupola; and the smoke from the fire would thicken and another smell would mingle with the fragrance of the incense. ”

“ My suspicion that Woodfell practiced strange arts was become a certainty, and my anxiety was deepened by what Marks had let slip about the danger of his letting loose these powers of the dark ness with which he trafficked, and then finding himself grown too feeble to control them. I could not but think that the sudden appearance of the beast in the garden of No. 19 was a sign of such a loosened control. My fears for her kept Pamela more in my mind than ever—if that were possible. ”

“ Ringrose in her bedroom on the other side of the landing, till the moon was nearly at the top of the sky, and the little square of turf in the middle of the garden was clear in its light.
Then the door into the garden opened, and there was a mutter of voices. A man came out; and the fluttering roar of the hull-roarer broke on the air. It startled and even daunted me a little; it indeed sounded a warning to pryers into the Mysteries to begone. Six figures followed the whirler of the bull-roarer down the garden path to the lawn in the middle, two of them swinging censers of incense ”