usly, since leaving there, and felt so keenly the loss of her
companionship, slight as it had so far been, that I knew that hereafter
all roads, for me, would lead to Exeter until the day came when I might
lead her from it as my wife. It was while occupied in these dreams that
I felt my cab draw up alongside the curb, just as the hour of midnight
was striking from Old St. Paul's. I dismissed my man with a shilling for
his pains, and ascended the steps of Number 30.

The house was an old one, and its exterior was gloomy and forbidding.
Not a light shone in its closely shuttered windows, and only over the
transom of the door was there any visible sign of occupants within. Here
a faintly burning oil lamp shone behind a cobwebby glass, with the
number of the house painted upon it in black. The whole atmosphere of
the place was depressing in the extreme, and I pulled the bell with
feelings of inward trepidation. Without, all was silent and deserted,
and the starless sky and the sighing of wind through the gloomy streets,
from which my cab had long since departed, but added to my presentiments
of evil. I had heard the faint jangle of a bell in the interior of the
house when I pulled the knob, but so long an interval elapsed before any
response came that I was on the point of ringing it again, when I
suddenly heard soft footsteps in the hallway, and the door was silently
opened. I stepped within, mechanically, unable to observe the person who
had admitted me, owing to the fact that he or she, I knew not which,
stood partially behind the door as it swung open and was therefore
concealed by it. I had taken but a single step into the passage, when
the door was swiftly closed behind me, and at the same instant a bag of
heavy cloth was thrust over my head, and my arms were pinioned from
behind in a vise-like grip. I attempted an outcry, and struggled
violently, but the bag was drawn closely about my throat by a noose in
the edge of it, and I felt myself being slowly, but surely, strangled.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE TEMPLE OF BUDDHA

It was but a few moments after midnight, when I entered the house in
Kingsgate Street, and it must have been nearly or quite an hour before I
finally removed the bag from my head and realized the nature of my
surroundings. Immediately after the attack upon me, I was lifted bodily
by two or three silent figures, and carried a considerable distance,
part of the way down a steep flight of stairs, and