424 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



our savage ancestors keep their children in order by 

 frightening them with stories about their horned cattle ? 

 It is certain at least that among the most portentous 

 forms known to those children must have been the oxen 

 and goats which formed a principal feature of their 

 surroundings. 



It must be admitted that there is something parti- 

 cularly hideous in a long horned face. I remember an 

 instance where the sudden appearance of such a face, 

 or what I took to be such, caused me a degree of dis- 

 comfort certainly not justified by the occasion. Sin- 

 gularly enough, the event belongs to the period of my 

 life to which I have already referred ; and I may as well 

 note that at no time, either before or since, have I even 

 for a moment (and against the will of the mind), 

 mistaken commonplace objects for either 'spirit of 

 health,' or ' goblin damn'd.' 



During the last weeks of the long vacation already 

 mentioned, I went alone to Blackpool, in Lancashire. 

 There I took lodgings in a house facing the sea. My 

 sitting-room was on the ground-floor. On a warm 

 autumn night I was reading with the window open : 

 but the blind was down and was waving gently to and 

 fro in the wind. It happened that I was reading a 

 book on demonology; moreover, I had been startled 

 earlier in the evening by prolonged shrieks from an 

 upper room. in the house, where my landlady's sister, 

 who was very ill, had had an hysterical fit. I had just 

 read to the end of a long and particularly horrible 

 narrative, when I was disturbed by the beating of the 



