He was caught completely off guard by whatever force--subjective or objective--hit him. When it was over, he was sitting in the easy-chair, completely sober, with the outer world once more an icy pressure on his senses, and the inner world a whirling sphere of alien thought, and the future a dark corridor two weeks long. It was as if a very large, horny hand had been clapped roughly over his mouth, and as if another such hand had grasped him by the shoulder, shook him, and slammed him down in the leather chair. As if? He looked around uneasily. Maybe there had been hands. Apparently Tansy had not noticed anything. Her face was a white oval in the gloom. She was still humming a snatch of song. She did not ask what he had started to say. He got up, walked unsteadily into the dining room, and poured himself a drink from the sideboard. On the way he switched on the lights. So he couldn't tell Tansy or anyone else about it, even if he wanted to? That was why you never heard from real witchcraft victims. And why they never seemed able to escape, even if the means of escape were at hand. It wasn't weak will. They were _watched_. Like a gangster taken on a ride from an expensive night club. He must excuse himself from the loud-mouthed crowd at his table and laugh heartily, and stop to chat with friends and throw a wink at the pretty girls because right behind him are those white-scarfed, top-hatted trigger boys, hands in the pockets of their velvety dress overcoats. No use dying now. Better play along. There might be a chance. But that was storybook stuff, movie stuff. He nodded at himself in the glass above the sideboard. "Meet Professor Saylor," he said. "The distinguished ethnologist and firm believer in real witchcraft--" But the face in the glass did not look so much disgusted as frightened. He mixed himself another drink, and one for Tansy, and took them into the living room. "Here's to wickedness," said Tansy. "Do you realize you haven't been anywhere near drunk since Christmas?" He grinned. That was just what the movie gangster would do, to grab a moment of forgetfulness when the Big Boy had put him on the spot. And not a bad idea. Slowly, and at first only in a melancholy minor key, the mood of the Hill returned. They talked, played old records, told jokes that were old enough to be new again. Tansy hammered the piano, and they sang a crazy assortment of songs--folk songs, hymns, national anthems, revolution songs, blues, Brahms, Schubert--haltingly at first, later at the top of their voices. They remembered. And they kept on drinking. But always, like a shimmering sphere of crystal, the alien thoughts spun in his mind. The drink made it possible for him to regard them dispassionately, without constant revulsions in the name of common sense. He began to see world-wide evidence for the operation of witchcraft.