Newling leaned against the shelves for a full five minutes before he summoned up enough strength to finish emptying the book truck. Still shaking, he rolled it out of the vault, slammed the great door, automatically twirled the dials and started back down the corridor. He was cold and weak. He had scarcely strength enough to slide open the elevator doors. He stepped out of the elevator into the large open-shelf room of the library with a feeling of indescribable relief. He felt as if he had ascended from a tomb. Mr. Twais, the head librarian, was coming down the aisle. He stopped when he came abreast of Newling. He was about to say something, but at the sight of Newling's face, his mouth fell open. "What is it, man?" he exclaimed. "You look positively shaken!" "Oh--nothing," Newling whispered. "I'll be all right. Just--the air--in the vault. I guess I felt a trifle faint." Mr. Twais seemed satisfied. He nodded. "You'd better go in the lounge and rest for a few minutes. Oh, by the way, have you heard the news?" Newling shook his head. Mr. Twais' expression became properly sober. "Preston Haver, our generous benefactor, died during the night." IN THE VERY STONES "It is inconceivable to me," wrote my psychic-investigator friend, Lucius Leffing, "that any person of reasonable perception and sensitivity could pass a long period of his life in a specific habitation without leaving something of himself, impregnated as it were, in the very stones, wood and mortar of the place." How vividly I recalled this statement later on! But let me start at the beginning. I had been away from New Haven for many years and I returned in a rather weary mood of reminiscence and regret. My health was not good. The rheumatic fever of my childhood had finally damaged my heart. In addition, I was having eye trouble. The optic nerves were unaccountably inflamed; strong light was painful to me. In dim or subdued light, however, I could see remarkably well, so well in fact that I began to feel that my vision was becoming abnormal. After engaging a room in one of the few remaining residential areas of the city which had not been engulfed in the spreading contagion of human and social degeneration, I began to take long, rambling walks about the town. I usually waited for a day when the sun was hidden; when the sky was overcast and the light was grey rather than gold, my eyes stopped throbbing and I could stroll in relative peace.