"I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about this cave!" shrieked the Homo Præhistoricus, or primeval man. Again I remonstrated, and inquired how I had incensed him. But yelling with rage, he threw himself upon me. In a moment I was enveloped in a luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about me, but I received no injury whatever, only my spiritual nature was subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the spook disengaged itself from me, and drew back to where it was before, screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering savagely. It rapidly cooled down. "Why do you wish me ill?" I asked again. "I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing." "Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent resentment?" "Because you are a son of the twentieth century, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you enjoy comforts, a civilisation that we knew nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!" Again he fell to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach. "I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine." "Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things--we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and iron-stone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we had nothing, nothing--no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no _chocolat menier_." "How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried under fifty feet of soil for eight thousand years?" "It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the tavern overhead. I have seen men drink there. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my psychical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. What do you think of doing with me?" "Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum." He screamed as though with pain, and gasped: "Don't! don't do it. It will be torture insufferable." "But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box."