And into it we swept; were devoured by it. Light in blinding, intolerable flood beat about us, blackening the sight with agony. We pressed, the three of us, against the side of the pony, burying our faces in its shaggy coat, striving to hide our eyes from the radiance which, strain closely as we might, seemed to pierce through the body of the little beast, through our own heads, searing the sight. CHAPTER X. “WITCH! GIVE BACK MY SISTER” How long we were within that glare I do not know; it seemed unending hours; it was of course only minutes--seconds, perhaps. Then I was sensible of a permeating shadow, a darkness gentle and healing. I raised my head and opened my eyes. We were moving tranquilly, with a curious suggestion of homing leisureliness, through a soft, blue shimmering darkness. It was as though we were drifting within some high borderland of light; a region in which that rapid vibration we call the violet was mingled with a still more rapid vibration whose quick pulsing was felt by the brain but ever fled ere that brain could register it in terms of color. And there seemed to be a film over my sight; dazzlement from the unearthly blaze, I thought, shaking my head impatiently. My eyes focused upon an object a little more than a foot away; my neck grew rigid, my scalp prickled while I stared, unbelieving. And that at which I stared was--a skeleton hand. Every bone a grayish black, sharply silhouetted, clean as some master surgeon's specimen, it was extended as though clutching at--clutching at--what was that toward which it was reaching? Again the icy prickling over scalp and skin--for its talons stretched out to grasp a steed that Death himself might have ridden, a rack whose bare skull hung drooping upon bent vertebrae. I raised my hands to my face to shut out the ghostly sight--and swiftly the clutching bony hand moved toward me--was before my eyes--touched me. The cry that sheer horror wrested from me was strangled by realization. And so acute was my relief, so reassuring was it to have in the midst of these mysteries some sane, understandable thing occur that I laughed aloud. For the skeleton hand was my own. The mournful ghastly mount of death was--our pony. And when I looked again I knew what I would see--and see them I did--two tall skeletons, skulls resting on their bony arms, leaning against the frame of the beast. While ahead of us, floating poised upon the surface of the glistening cube, were two women skeletons--Ruth and Norhala! Weird enough was the sight. Dureresque, grimly awful as materialization of a scene of the Dance Macabre--and yet--vastly comforting. For here was something which was well within the range of human knowledge. It was the light about us that did it; a vibration that even as I conjectured, was within the only partly explored region of the ultraviolet and the comparatively unexplored region above it.