"Good gad. I know that man! That's Sir Lawrence Hockling!" "He's also a monstrous, warty, holey creature, like a lump of wormy cheese.... Good afternoon, Sir Lawrence," I said loudly. "I believe you've been looking for me. I'm Robert Hood of Manchester." "Ah yes, the Slasher." The bugaboo that was Sir Lawrence nodded briefly. "It seems we have failed to annihilate you. No matter; others will." "No, Sir Lawrence, you fail to grasp the situation. You're finished, you invaders. You've had your fun, but now you've got to pick up and go home, and never come back. Because we can see you." He held up his hand. "Wait, sir. We accept you as a seer, of course. There have been others--" _Jack the Ripper_, said I to myself with a chuckle--"others who have accidentally been enabled to pierce the veil between the lands. We have dealt with them, as we shall eventually with you. But your companions--let them describe us!" The Colonel pounced on this challenge like a tiger on a goat. I was breathless, thankful that I had described at least Sir Lawrence to him. "You're a cross between a speckled cheese and a diseased bit of garbage. Lumps and bumps all over your slimy carcass!" "Good enough," said the monster, quaking with wrath. "That will do, Colonel Bedford. I meant to say, let some of these--ah, rather unwashed gentry tell us of our true bodies." * * * * * I was turning sick with fear, the fear that now we were done for, that now the colossal bluff would collapse. I had forgotten Arold--Arold, who could see them plain as day. "The bloke on yer right," he shrilled, "is lyke a shark, all silvery and slick, wiff a big glow in 'is guts lyke a blurry fire. Next t' him is--welp, it's 'ard to tell, but I'd say he were a ostopus, you know, one o' them big leather things under the ocean." "Shall I have each of them describe you all?" I leaped into the breech with a shouted challenge. "Shall we waste a couple of hours talking of your stalks and pseudopods? Or are you satisfied? Man, man, why do you think they came here, if not to crush you and your kind? Why did they fight you with such fury, if not because they can see you in all your horror?" Needless to say, Arold's ruffians were staring bug-eyed at all this incomprehensible arguing. "Well," said Sir Lawrence, "you obviously couldn't make so many men believe in us if they couldn't see us. I simply had to make sure." Fortunately he and the others never turned round to observe the wonder on the thugs' faces. "I accept you as seers. How did you manage it? How did you warp their vision?" "You know as well as I." _Now, Will Chester, bluff, bluff!_ "Yes," he said, "ever since we entered your world, centuries ago, we've been afraid that one day the secret of vision-tuning might be stumbled upon by some clever member of your species. The trick of it is, after all, ridiculously simple."