Bolting the door he then tried to force the lid open. But it resented this move on his part, and showed it by pinching his finger violently. This caused him to fling it against the wall. It came to the floor with a dull thud and the top fell off after a moment's silence. A squeaky voice issued from the interior. "--press the control marked A and the machine will come to him no matter where it is. I am making three boxes similar to this and hope that someone will gain some benefit, for I haven't. Anyone finding this is directed to press the control marked A and the machine will come to him no matter where it is iammakingthree-e-e-E-EEE Yah psuhutthush!" declared the little box. As Hsuth did not understand what was said, it is to be feared the directions were lost upon him, yet some demon directed his finger to the control marked A. Perhaps it was because all the other buttons were hopelessly jammed into the wood. Nothing happened, and Hsuth disappointedly threw the box through the window where it landed upon the head of a prominent citizen, causing that worthy unwonted irritation. And Hsuth forgot about the box and the fraudulent control marked A, not knowing that ten million miles away the machine was battering ceaselessly at its bonds, striving to escape and answer the long-awaited call--which it never quite managed to do. But the Leerians gathered round with frightened eyes to watch the reanimation of the god of the forefathers on that far continent, and offered up sacrifices in the form of decrepit inhabitants and those who would have had them doubt their deity. * * * * * PROSE PASTELS by Clark Ashton Smith _III. The Muse of Hyperborea_ Too far away is her wan and mortal face, and too remote are the snows of her lethal breast, for mine eyes to behold them ever. But at whiles her whisper comes to me, like a chill unearthly wind that is faint from traversing the gulfs between the worlds, and has flown over ultimate horizons of ice-bound deserts. And she speaks to me in a tongue I have never heard but have always known; and she tells of deathly things and of things beautiful beyond the ecstatic desires of love. Her speech is not of good or evil, nor of anything that is desired or conceived or believed by the termites of earth; and the air she breathes, and the lands wherein she roams, would blast like the utter cold of sidereal space; and her eyes would blind the vision of men like suns; and her kiss, if one should ever attain it, would wither and slay like the kiss of lightning.