But the Sylan reflected, too, a bit wistfully, that his own mortal youth was now for some time overpast. It had, in fact, been nearly six hundred years since he had been really young, a good five and a half centuries since young Guivric and his nine tall comrades in the famous fellowship had so delighted in their patrimony of five human senses and had spent that inheritance rather notably. Yes, he was getting on, the Sylan reflected; he had quite lost touch with the ways of these latter-day young people. Yet it was perhaps unavoidable that in the great while since he had gone about this world in a man’s natural body, the foibles of human youth had become somewhat strange to him; and it was not, after all, to appraise the wastefulness of authors that you had traveled a long way, from Caer Omn to Lichfield, at the command of another Author, to put this doomed red-headed boy out of living. The Sylan spoke.... 2. Evelyn of Lichfield THE Sylan spoke. He spoke at some length. And the young man at the writing-table, after arising with the slight start which these supernatural visitations invariably evoked from him, had presently heard the Sylan’s proposal. “Who is it,” said Gerald, then, “that tempts me to this sacrifice and to this partial destruction?” The Sylan replied, “The name that I had in my mortal living was Guivric, but now I am called Glaum of the Haunting Eyes.” That was a queer name, and it was a queer arrangement, too, which this vague wraith in the likeness of a man was proposing,—an arrangement, Gerald Musgrave decided, which, at least, was worth consideration.... For, as a student of magic, Gerald Musgrave in his time had dealt with many demons: but never had been made to him, before this final night in the April of 1805, such a queer, and yet rational, and even handsome offer as was now held out. Gerald pushed aside the manuscript of his unfinished romance about Dom Manuel of Poictesme; he straightened the ruffles about his throat; and for an instant he weighed the really quite alluring suggestion.... Most demons were obsessed by the notion of buying from you a soul which Gerald, in this age of reason, had no sure proof that he possessed. But this Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, it seemed, was empowered and willing to rid Gerald of all corporal obligations, and to take over Gerald’s physical life just as it stood,—even with all the plaguing complications of Gerald’s entanglement with Evelyn Townsend. “I was once human,” the Sylan explained, “and wore a natural body. And old habits, in such trifles as apparel, cling. I feel at times, even nowadays, after five centuries of a Sylan’s care-free living, rather at a loss for human ties.”