‘Suppressed or misdirected energy again, I suppose,’ he said in a low tone, respecting his companion’s emotion. ‘And these mountain men,’ he asked abruptly, ‘do they still keep up their--practices?’ ‘Their ceremonies, yes,’ corrected the other, master of himself again. ‘Turbulent moments of nature, storms and the like, stir them to clumsy rehearsals of once vital rituals--not entirely ineffective, even in their incompleteness, but dangerous for that very reason. This _joran_, for instance, invariably communicates something of its atmospherical energy to themselves. They light their fires as of old. They blunder through what they remember of _his_ ceremonies. With the glasses you may see them in their dozens, men and women, leaping and dancing. It’s an amazing sight, great beauty in it, impossible to witness even from a distance without feeling the desire to take part in it. Even my people feel it--the only time they ever get alive,’--he jerked his big head contemptuously towards the street--‘or feel desire to act. And some one from the heights--a messenger perhaps--will be down later, this very evening probably, on the hunt----’ ‘On the hunt?’ Hendricks asked it half below his breath. He felt a touch of awe as he heard this experienced, genuinely religious man speak with conviction of such curious things. ‘On the hunt?’ he repeated more eagerly. ‘Messengers do come down,’ was the reply. ‘A living belief always seeks to increase, to grow, to add to itself. Where there’s conviction there’s always propaganda.’ ‘Ah, converts----?’ Leysin shrugged his big black shoulders. ‘Desire to add to their number--desire to _save_,’ he said. ‘The energy they absorb overflows, that’s all.’ The Englishman debated several questions vaguely in his mind; only his mind, being disturbed, could not hold the balance exactly true. Leysin’s influence, as of old, was upon him. A possibility, remote, seductive, dangerous, began to beckon to him, but from somewhere just outside his reasoning mind. ‘And they always know when one of their kind is near,’ the voice slipped in between his tumbling thoughts, ‘as though they get it instinctively from these universal elements they worship. They select their recruits with marvellous judgment and precision. No messenger ever goes back alone; nor has a recruit ever been known to return to the lazy squalor of the conditions whence he escaped.’ The younger man sat upright in his chair, suddenly alert, and the gesture that he made unconsciously might have been read by a keen psychiatrist as evidence of mental self-defence. He felt the forbidden impulse in him gathering force, and tried to call a halt. At any rate, he called upon the other man to be explicit. He enquired point-blank what this religion of the heights might be. What were these elements these people worshipped? In what did their wild ceremonies consist?