say--'What's going to happen now?'

"'Out of the way! 'cried Krespel, who hastened to one end of the
garden, and then paced slowly towards his rectangle of stone walls. On
reaching the side of it which was nearest--the one, that is, towards
which he had been marching--he shook his head dissatisfied, went to the
other end of the garden, then paced up to the wall as before, shaking
his head, dissatisfied, once more. This process he repeated two or
three times; but at last, going straight up to the wall till he touched
it with the point of his nose, he cried out, loud--

"Come here, you fellows, come here! Knock me in the door! Knock me in a
door _here_!' He gave the size it was to be, accurately in feet and
inches; and what he told them to do they did. When the door was knocked
out, he walked into the house, and smiled pleasantly at the builder's
remark that the walls were just the proper height for a nice
two-storied house. He walked meditatively up and down inside, the masons
following him with their tools, and whenever he cried 'here a window
six feet by four; a little one yonder three feet by two,' out flew the
stones as directed.

"It was during these operations that I arrived in H----, and it was
entertaining in the extreme to see some hundreds of people collected
outside the garden, all hurrahing whenever the stones flew out, and a
window appeared where none had been expected. The house was all
finished in the same fashion, everything being done according to
Krespel's directions as given on the spot. The quaintness of the
proceeding, the feeling--not to be resisted--that it was all going to
turn out so marvellously better than was to have been expected; but,
particularly, Krespel's liberality, which, by the way, cost him
nothing, kept everybody in the best of humour. So the difficulties
attending this remarkable style of house-building were got over, and in
a very brief time there stood a fully-finished house, which had the
maddest appearance, certainly, from the outside, no two windows being
alike, and so forth, but was a marvel of comfort and convenience
within. Everybody said so who entered it, and I was of the same
opinion, when Krespel admitted me to it after I made his acquaintance.

"It was some time, however, ere I did so. He had been so engrossed by
his building operations that he had never gone, as he did at other
times, to lunch at Professor M----'s on Thursdays, saying he should not
cross his thres