So the two men pursued their journey jail ward in silence along the old road through the woods. Only once did Mannering venture a turn of his head; just once, when he was in the deep shadow of a big overhanging elm tree and he knew that the other was in the full light of the moon, he looked backward. His captor was John Duff, the jailer, as white as death and bearing upon his brow the livid mark of the iron bar. Orrin Mannering had no further curiosity.
Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but deserted. Not a soul appeared to be abroad. Straight up the main street the criminal held his way; straight up to the entrance of the jail he walked and laid his hand upon the knob, opening without command the big iron-bound door. Passing through the dimly lighted corridor, Mannering opened a second door and found himself in the presence of half a dozen armed men who were crowding round a table. But the street door had not opened and closed behind him to admit his captor, so he turned round. Nobody else had entered.
The armed men walked quickly toward Mannering to catch him as he collapsed, for he saw on the table the dead body of John Duff.
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From time to time we receive letters from you, the readers of this magazine, commenting on the fact that some of our finest stories are what are known as "filler" stories, or "short shorts;" that is, stories of less than five pages in length, printed in the back pages of the magazine, usually without illustrations. Some of these short shorts continue to receive votes from you for months, and even years, after they are printed. Prime example of this last year was Mary Elizabeth Counselman's intriguing short yarn, The Three Marked Pennies; and this year Walker G. Everett's bizarre fantasy entitled The Woman in Gray bids fair to equal the popularity of Miss Counselman's little masterpiece. One reader points out that E. Hoffmann Price's tale of devil worship, The Stranger from Kurdistan, "one of the most powerful and perfect stories ever printed anywhere," took up only four pages in Weird Tales. Two other "filler" stories for which votes and letters are still coming in are The Cats of Ulthar by H. P. Lovecraft and The Night Wire by H. F. Arnold, which were printed several years ago. And there are others. Mere length does not make a story great; and although we will continue to put our main efforts into seeking out and publishing the best weird novelettes and feature-length stories written today, we also take pride in our very short fiction. We rec-
