His thin lips had tightened strangely as he listened. The dark eyes deep beneath his shaggy brows had peered into mine, as if probing to my soul. Solemnly, his deep and hollow voice had warned: "Son, if you want to save your life, your sanity, your soul, never go back to that circle of stones! And never tell another human being that you have found them. Forget. Promise me you will forget." And I--then I must have been no older than six--I promised him. But I never forgot. I had never gone back; but that strange, instinctive dread clung still, a web of insidious evil that meshed my soul. I strove to push that ancient, haunting memory from my mind, to think only of the beauty of Valyne Kirk. And her smiling image was clear in my mind, as I went up the hill toward the old stone house. But she came to me before I had passed the last turning. I heard her voice from among the trees, on a dim wood road that ran a short way up the somber, forested slope of Blue Squaw Mountain. "Help----" She must have recognized me when I paused; for her voice came again, gasping and breathless, but with an eager joy crowding upon its fear. "Clay!" For my name is Claiborne Coe, and she has always called me that. "Clay, is it really you? Oh, help me----" Through the twilight under the trees, I saw the gigantic shape lumbering after her. I ran to meet a great, bearded hulk of a man. His faded overalls were dark with dried blood. His broad face, dark above the rusty beard, was twitching with lust. His eyes were bulging and glazed. Valyne was at my side, panting: "Oh, Clay, stop him----" I called to him, "Stop!" He mouthed some bestial sound, and came on, ignoring me. His great hands were twitching, as if already shredding the clothing from Valyne's lovely body. I stood before him. He swung at me carelessly, with one great hairy arm, as if to brush me out of the way. I ducked under his arm, and slapped his bearded face. "Stop it, man," I said sharply. "You don't know what you're doing!" For the first time, then, his glassy, protruding eyes seemed to focus on me. In the hoarse, cursing rasp of his voice I read the words: "My gal.... Git out of the way!..." His great arm swung at me again. I didn't move, and the open-handed blow jarred me to my feet. I heard Valyne's quick voice, low and distressed: "Clay! Don't let him hurt you. He's a beast! I was coming down to meet you, when I saw him on the road. I hid. But he must have seen me. He found me, chased me----" Muttering in the tawny beard, the man came at me, now in earnest, with his hairy fists balled. I fought him, then. Always, since I was a child, I have sought to avoid physical combat. The reason is more terrible than cowardice; for a red demon seizes my body, with the first blow I strike. Blind destroying fury overwhelms all restraint. And afterward, when the calm of sanity returns, a crimson fog dulls the memory of the fearful things I may have done.