As I arose to go to the house, something--that was not visible--seemed to come from every quarter at once and smite me. I felt a sharp, electric thrill, which was followed by a sensation as if I had been flung from a height and raised up again, with some of my faculties benumbed by the fall. My hair stood up, but I felt no fear, only a passive wonder, mixed with expectation. Turning, I saw, by a transient gleam of moonlight, the girl Asenath, standing in the path near by, pointing at me with a long, slender rod. The ray passed and left a black Shadow there, which moved slowly away, beckoning to me. I followed. The Shadow led me out of the shrubbery and along the wide avenue between the two rows of huts occupied by the negroes, and ended at the mansion house. I had no will or thought but to follow it exactly. It stopped before one of the huts and bent itself nearly double. I, too, bent over, involuntarily, and every muscle of my body seemed to become tense. The perspiration started out of me, and my will was like a bar of steel ending in great fingers, which grasped something and pulled upon it with such force that my inner self was a-tremble with weakness when the tension relaxed, which it did at the opening of the cottage door and the coming out of a little lad--a mere child--who looked ghastly, as one of the dead walking. He placed himself beside me, we followed the shadowy woman to another house, dragged at the invisible cords of another human soul, and brought it out into the night. It was a woman, this time, in scantiest of night-robes. And so we went on, stopping at every door, and from every door some one came forth, except from that of Lucas. There, grasp as it would, the steel fingers clutched nothing, and the door remained shut. The woman Asenath muttered to herself, and all the crowd of followers muttered, too. With them, my own lips formed words, of which I did not then comprehend the meaning: “Soulless beast!” We went on beyond the quarters, stopped at the mansion, and dragged at something that resisted with all its strength, which was weaker than ours, for it yielded at last, and came slowly, slowly down the steps and stood among us. It was my sister Helen. Asenath laughed, and ghastly laughter broke from all, even from Helen herself. I had no feeling of compassion for her, nor of fear for her or myself, but was simply a force which another exerted. The wills of those who followed Asenath were but strands in the cable of her power, and their strength was in her hands for good or ill. We followed again--out of the plantation, through a forest of pines, over a bridge that spanned slow-crawling, black water, past a fallen church, surrounded by forgotten graves, to the top of a hill where there were stones laid in the form of a serpent--a great cleft stone, like open jaws, forming the head. There Asenath paused and cast down her rod. She stretched out her hands, and in a moment we were formed into a circle about the rod.