“It is curious,” said the Colonel, with a sudden rush of words, drawing a deep breath, and as though speaking of things distasteful to him, “that during my years among the Hill Tribes of Northern India I came across⁠—personally came across⁠—instances of the sacrifices of blood to certain deities being stopped suddenly, and all manner of disasters happening until they were resumed. Fires broke out in the huts, and even on the clothes, of the natives⁠—and⁠—and I admit I have read, in the course of my studies,”⁠—he made a gesture toward his books and heavily laden table⁠—“of the Yezidis of Syria evoking phantoms by means of cutting their bodies with knives during their whirling dances⁠—enormous globes of fire which turned into monstrous and terrible forms⁠—and I remember an account somewhere, too, how the emaciated forms and pallid countenances of the spectres, that appeared to the Emperor Julian, claimed to be the true Immortals, and told him to renew the sacrifices of blood ‘for the fumes of which, since the establishment of Christianity, they had been pining’⁠—that these were in reality the phantoms evoked by the rites of blood.”