since he believed that windows retained latent images of those who had sat

at them. The boy had gone to look at the windows of that horrible attic,

because of tales of things seen behind them, and had come back screaming

maniacally.

Manton remained thoughtful as I said this, but gradually reverted to his

analytical mood. He granted for the sake of argument that some unnatural

monster had really existed, but reminded me that even the most morbid

perversion of nature need not be unnamable or scientifically

indescribable. I admired his clearness and persistence, and added some

further revelations I had collected among the old people. Those later

spectral legends, I made plain, related to monstrous apparitions more

frightful than anything organic could be; apparitions of gigantic bestial

forms sometimes visible and sometimes only tangible, which floated about

on moonless nights and haunted the old house, the crypt behind it, and the

grave where a sapling had sprouted beside an illegible slab. Whether or

not such apparitions had ever gored or smothered people to death, as told

in uncorroborated traditions, they had produced a strong and consistent

impression; and were yet darkly feared by very aged natives, though

largely forgotten by the last two generations - perhaps dying for lack of

being thought about. Moreover, so far as esthetic theory was involved, if

the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what

coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a