Tales of horror and the supernatural Book

Well, this was better than the previous Machen collection I read, though it does include the very silly "Novel of the White Powder." Machen goes very much for the building of dread over unsaid things and of intimations of terrors arising from the unknowable past or from lost traditions, and some of the stories--"Children of the Pool" especially--pull it off rather well. I was considering rating this book higher, in fact, until the explanation it offers for the rebellion of the animals against humans in the final--and very long--story, "The Terror," is that insects and other creatures become killers of humans for a while ... because the King abdicated. Oy vey. The idea itself, of everything from bees and moths up to sheep and cattle turning on humans (always of course in small groups and in isolated places, so nobody can trig to what is going on), is interesting enough, and the story builds (if rather too slowly, at over 100 pages) readerly intrigue. But, oh that explanation! Better (this one time, perhaps) to have left it as inexplicable. Anyway, overall a decent enough collection of tales of the weird and macabre, but Machen continues to fail to impress me as the genius of horror his reputation claims he is.