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mockery of the Most Holy. They hoped to win my Master over, by hook or by crook; to persuade him to populate the vaulted ceiling with the holy ones of Heaven rather than show those desolate lands with their three hideous suns and loathsome circle, the in-signia of the Devil.
    Oh yes, they concealed the awful scenes, but not for long. For just before the next dawn broke, before holy Matins as the first pale light began to chase the stars from the heavens, the diakons who had been keeping watch under the cursed vault of the ceiling to drive away the powers of darkness by their virtuous and sanctified presence rushed out in great fear as if a hundred vrags from Hell were after them and ran to the iguman's residence, crossing themselves frantically and crying, "A miracle! A miracle!"
    Since they found no other words to speak of the great terror that gripped their innocent souls other than vacant, witless exclamations and since their clamor woke the whole monastery—including me, who being God's servant, sleeps as lightly as they do—we all hurried after the bewildered iguman into the church in trepidation and dark foreboding, only to receive a new, unwanted gift of Sotona.
    I myself was last to arrive, held back in the monastery courtyard by a terrible, diabolical din, which I first thought arose from the bosom of the earth itself, from
the plague-ridden lairs of the demonic spawn; but when I collected myself a little, I noticed that the inhuman, fiendish laughter was coming from depths far shallower than Hell: from the cellar under the iguman's residence where my Master lay. And a chill icier than that of dawn clutched my heart.
    Oh, I know only too well all the sounds he utters—pleasant and mild, harsh and angry—too well to be mistaken. It was his voice indeed, but it seemed to come out of the very jaws of the Unclean. No human creature could produce that satanic laughter. Only the perverse joy that fills the Devil when he tears yet another fallen soul from the Almighty could produce such awful howling.
    For a moment I stopped as if transfixed, my gaze directed at the narrow slit, which was all that let the light of God's day into the gloomy cold of the cellar. Icy fear filled me: the fear that after the Master's terrible laughter the last trumpets of Yerichon would ring out and the Day of Judgment come upon us, that the dread hordes of the underworld would spew forth to draw us into their bottomless, fiery pit.
    But no such thing happened, may the Lord be eternally praised. The horrible, eerie laughter changed to a painful, choking rattle, as if the vrag had suddenly left my Master to put an end to the inhuman sound with his own weak, paltry throat.
    The sudden silence that reigned, ancient and deathlike, rather than allaying my fear only made it grow. Turning and seeing that I was alone in the middle of the courtyard, I hastened after the others to see the new miracle in the church, thankful to God that no other ears than mine had heard that sepulchral, mocking roar hideously issuing from the jaws of the Unclean, for if they had, they could no longer doubt that my Master was entirely in his power.
    All my poor hopes that the Master might yet be saved from a relentless, abominable fate withered as soon as I stepped under the cursed ceiling, joining the monachs who stood mute and trembling, their gaze directed upward or askance as they crossed themselves and mouthed barely audible prayers. I looked up and I saw. A miracle, in truth, not of God but of the Devil.
    For there where the God-fearing monachs had with industry born of terror concealed with all-whitening lime those scenes of supreme offense and pain to the eye of the believer—there was now no concealment! The hideous images of Sotona, endowed by some supernatural power, had cast off the pall of the just and showed themselves once more in all their baneful nakedness, with the dread signs of the Unclean One, which now seemed to burn with some accursed, fiery