Ethel moved with the rest. She did not chant, or leap, or scream. Her arms hung limp and white, her hands in the hot-pawed clutch of her neighbours. She passed Miss Mayfield twice and was almost opposite the tower door on her third round when something happened. All movement, all sound stopped. Then, as suddenly, as silently, as corn falling to the scythe, they all, except Ethel, fell flat to the ground. And through the hot-house air of the church there swept a chill, as though a wind from the ice fields of the Arctic had blown in.

With her hair bristling, and goose-pimpled all over, utterly bemused and frightened almost to death, Miss Mayfield could think only one thing. Save Ethel!

She was out, she had Ethel by her shoulders; the red wreath tilted and fell off. And there they were back in the tower room; and she was pushing the door into place and fixing the iron bar which hung from a ring set in the wall on one side of the doorway, and which, when lifted, fell into an iron socket fixed on the other side. And even as she dropped it into place, she thought, If what I think is out there, a stout door and an iron bar will be no protection at all.

Afterwards she disliked to think about what she feared. She was, in a fashion, the victim of her faith. She acknowledged a Power which had parted the Red Sea, brought the walls of Jericho tumbling down, rent the veil of the Temple, rolled the stone from the mouth of the tomb. The almost inevitable concomitant of such belief was to acknowledge another power, responsible for all the bad things, all the lies and cruelties and injustices in the world, a power which might make a stout iron bar break like a rotten stick.

Standing there, like a mother partridge defending one chick, she waited for it to happen.

For several minutes, nothing happened at all. And when, at last, those outside made a move, it was marvellously reassuring. They yelped and howled, they flung themselves against the door, flesh and blood against sound timber and cold iron. And she remembered a phrase, one of Rose’s sayings, ‘God has no hand, but man’s to work with.’ It was equally true of the Devil. Everything else – black magic, white magic, miracles, answered prayers – they were left-overs, dregs, the vestigial remains of primitive man’s bewildered recognition of things beyond his control.

If they had any power other than their own, they wouldn’t throw themselves against that door, she thought, and turned to Ethel.

She said, ‘You’re all right now.’ She said, ‘Ethel, look at me.’ She said, ‘Ethel, you know me – Miss Mayfield.’ Ethel stood, unresponsive as a doll, icy-cold to the touch.