Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [ Transcriber’s Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=. ] THE TWO MAGICS THE TURN OF THE SCREW COVERING END BY HENRY JAMES AUTHOR OF “DAISY MILLER,” “THE EUROPEANS” ETC., ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1898 All rights reserved Copyright, 1898, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. THE TURN OF THE SCREW The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion--an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation that drew from Douglas--not immediately, but later in the evening--a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out what was in his mind. “I quite agree--in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was--that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to _two_ children----?” “We say, of course,” somebody exclaimed, “that they give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them.”