"A good cigar in front of the card room fire, and your story, eh?" Duckford led the way up to the snug card room where a cheerful fire was blazing. "Sit down. Where is that dashed waiter? Oh, you there, Griggs. Come along with some whisky and soda." Crabbe sat down in a deep chair by the fire, and stretched his feet to the flame. Duckford said nothing; only pulled at his cigar and patiently waited for what he knew was soon coming. "Do you know--but, no, of course you don't," he began presently. "But can you imagine how it can be that a man could pass all his force into a bronze statue and make it live.... You've heard these literary men and artists talk about putting their souls into their work, Duckford?" Duckford pursed his lips. "Everything lives--even a bronze statue," he said seriously. "If it was not so it would atrophy, it would crumble and disappear. Look at the case of----" "That's just what old Ombos said. And if he didn't understand all about those things, I should jolly well like to be led to the man who did. Ombos told me hundreds of times that a man walked about this earth throwing his force into everything he came in contact with--scattering some kind of power; and of course that power is picked up by stones and houses and ... statues, or anything. Ombos misused it; that was disastrous. It seems to me that it is safe to use this god-energy only in its own proper sphere. You have very likely heard of men who have tried to pass themselves into inanimate objects? Well, what would you say if I tell you that _I_ even _I_--who sit now so soberly before you, whom before the war you knew to be ordinarily, a quiet, peaceably-disposed, sport-loving English fellow--had once been under the spell of a bronze statue that somebody had passed clean into?" "You were under the hypnotic influence of your friend Ombos, probably," I suggested. "You may think so, _now_; but you just wait till I have told you all about Ombos, and the bronze statue. Then you'll be able to decide if it was trickery.... It would be different if you could have seen the statue." Then Crabbe proceeded to unfold his strange tale.