Suppose, just as an intellectual exercise, you tried to analyze it in terms of sorcery. The dragon would be a clear case of sympathetic magic. Mrs. Gunnison animated it by operating on the photographs. And if you hypothesized a bull-roarer, or the recording of one, it would provide a neat magical explanation for the wind last night and the storm and wind today--both associated with Mrs. Sawtelle. And then the similar sound in his dream--He wrinkled his nose in distaste. He could hear Tansy calling Totem from the back porch, rattling his little tin pan. Put today's self-injurious acts in another category. The obsidian knife. The razor blade. The cranky saucepan. The carpet tack. The match that he had let burn his fingers a few minutes ago. Perhaps the razor blade had been charmed, like the enchanted sword or ax which wounds the person who wields it. Perhaps someone had stolen the blood-smeared obsidian knife and dropped it in water, so the wound would keep flowing. That was a well-established superstition. A dog was trotting along the sidewalk out in front. He could distinctly hear the _clop-clop_ of paws. Tansy was still calling Totem. Perhaps a sorcerer had commanded him to destroy himself by inches--or millimeters, considering the razor blade. That would explain all the self-injurious acts at one swoop. The flat voice in the dream had ordered him to do it. The dog had turned up the drive. His claws made a grating sound on the concrete. The tarot-card diagrams scribbled by Mrs. Sawtelle would figure as some magical control mechanism. The stick figure of the man and the truck had grim implications if interpreted in the light of his irrational fear of automobile accidents. It really didn't sound so much like a dog. Probably the neighbor's boy dragging home by jerks some indeterminate bulky object. The neighbor's boy devoted all his spare time to collecting old metal. "Totem! Totem!" Followed by the sound of the back door closing. Finally, that very trite "sense of a presence" just behind him. Taller than himself, hands poised to grab. Only whenever you looked over your shoulder, it dodged. Something like that had figured in the dream--the source, perhaps, of the flat voice. And in that case-- His patience snapped. An intellectual exercise, all right! For morons! He stubbed out his cigarette. * * * * * "Well, I've done my duty. That cat can sing for his supper." Tansy sat on the arm of the chair and put her hand on Norman's shoulder. "How are things going at college?" He smiled up at her. He had been afraid of that question. "Not so good," he replied lightly. "The chairmanship?" He nodded. "Sawtelle got it." Tansy cursed fluently. It did him good to hear her. "Make you want to take up conjuring again?" Hold on! He shouldn't have said that. She looked at him closely. "How do you mean that?" she asked. "Just a joke."