"Ah! well you may open your august eyes at the mention of a vice so brutally preposterous. Thus it is to be sons of clay. We, who are more finely organised beings, of an essence more ethereal, are content to allow ages to pass before we indulge our appetites with a full meal; yet we, too, my brethren, need sustenance sometimes. "Again we are suffering from the pangs of hunger, and we must be satisfied. Patience, my fellow sages and students of those sublime and abstruse sciences ignored by the gross intellects of our reptile neighbours, patience, for to-morrow I bring you a feast of blood. I have brought you blood before, and I will do so again. It is for this that I have taken upon me the base form of one of the vilest among their own vile race. "My own comely shape by which I am known here below is ill-suited to brook the atmosphere of the surface world; therefore, partly to excite compassion, and consequently disarm suspicion, I have adopted a loathsome disguise, through which even ye, my friends, would fail to recognise me. At this moment, while I am speaking, the filthy clay that for your sakes I shall don to-morrow lies in the chamber of the victim. "I am so far able to free myself from it as to speak with you in the spirit, but I much fear that the sympathy which to some extent must exist between my spirit and the fulsome mask that awaits me in the world above, may so influence the organs of the foul body as to cause it to correspond audibly to the voice of my spirit, and so alarm the victim in whose chamber it sleeps, and scare him into flight. "Therefore my discourse must be brief. There is no time to be lost. At once ye must commence to stir up the internal fires in this earth's centre, and cause a powerful earthquake. The external crust which these mortals inhabit must crack and gape into chasms. I will lead him into the mountains to-morrow when he will be your prey; till then, farewell." No sooner had the orator concluded his harangue than I began to feel a curious sensation. It was as if the floor on which I had been lying were lifted up under me, and I felt myself rolling from side to side, much in the same manner as if I were at sea. This motion continued and increased, and was accompanied by a low rumbling sound. After a time this grew louder, and I heard an explosion, and then a heavy crash, as if the mountains were being riven asunder, and were now toppling headlong into the valleys, sweeping away whole villages with a force inconceivable. The whole chalet rocked like an open boat in a storm. I was panic struck, and trembled in every limb. It was then really true all that I had seen and heard; it was no disordered dream. The gnomes were really at work.