A fantastic shadow followed Lothian, coquetting with the flower beds, popping this way and that, but ever at his heels.
It threw itself about in swimming areas of grey vagueness and then concentrated itself into a black patch with moving outlines.
There was an ecstasy about this dancing shadow.
And now, the big building which had been a barn and which Admiral Custance had re-built and put to various uses, cut wedge-like into the lit sky.
The Shadow crept close to the Dream Figure and crouched at its heels.
It seemed to be spurring that figure on, to be whispering in its ear. . . .
We know all about the Dream Figure. Through the long pages of this chronicle we have learned how, and of what, It has been born.
And were it not that experts of the Middle Age—when Demonology was a properly recognised science—have stated that a devil has never a shadow, we should doubtless have been sure that it was our old friend, the Fiend Alcohol, that contracted and expanded with such fantastic measures over the moon-lit grass.
Lothian knew his way well about this domain.
Admiral Custance had been his good friend. Often in the old sailor's house, or in Lothian's, the two had tippled together and drank toasts to the supremacy which Queen Britannia has over the salt seas.