‘Still they danced, and still she grew brighter and warmer, but not like a living woman yet. And Vermudyn, like a mere straw drifting round and round in a whirlpool, became weaker and fainter every minute, and his face now was something ghastly to see; but his eyes were still fixed on the girl, and he could see nothing and feel nothing beside. Her shining hair had got loosened in the dance, and seemed to be flying round them like thin golden flames as they moved.
‘It was she, now, who held Vermudyn up and forced him still to dance. His arms were round her yet; but her strength alone sustained the fainting man. She flew round as easily as ever; her feet scarcely touching the ground. The noise grew furious and deafening—music and laughter, shouts and screams that made my blood run cold, with snatches of old songs between, were all mingled together in one hideous mighty roar.
‘The faces of the men, or the demons who took their shape, got more fiendish as they danced; when suddenly the dancers swept out of the room in a wild crowd, just as they had entered it, and in their midst Vermudyn, lying dead, or senseless, on the floor. I tried to move—to reach him somehow at that desperate pass; but I couldn’t stir a finger. I struggled to shout aloud—to call his name. I might have been dead, for all the help I could give him. I had no power to speak or move.
‘Directly that demoniacal crew left the room, the lights seemed to fade and the fire grow dim. Thick darkness fell over everything, and I could not see a ray of light from where I now lay like a helpless log.
‘I remembered nothing more until I opened my eyes in broad daylight, stiff, and shivering with cold. I was lying at the entrance of a little cave among the rocks, wrapped in my blanket, and close to the embers of a dying fire. My horse, I saw, was picketed not far from me.
‘I was still in the Devil’s Panniken, sure enough. I saw the road by which we had come last night; but the place was strange to me; these were not the rocks I had seen before, which surrounded the place where we had spent the night.
‘_We?_ I was quite alone now, and broad awake! The house and all else had vanished. As the recollections of the past night came crowding back, I sprang up and looked around in wonder. The house—the very room—in which I’d been was so distinctly before my mind’s eye, that I stood staring in amazement to find myself alone. No vestige of the house I’ve described to you, and no Vermudyn either! I told myself that I was clean mad. I searched for him in a sort of frantic hurry, and shouted his name, but heard only the echoes answer me.