myself was shut
up inside; the word was given, "To Deepley Walls;" the station was left
behind, and away we went, jolting and rumbling along the quiet country
lanes, and under over-arching trees, all aglow just now with autumn's
swift-fading beauty. The afternoon was closing in, and the wind was
rising, sweeping up with melancholy soughs from the dim wooded hollows
where it had lain asleep till the sun went down; garnering up the fallen
leaves like a cunning miser, wherever it could find a hiding-place for
them, and then dying suddenly down, and seeming to hold its breath as if
listening for the footsteps of the coming winter.

In the western sky hung a huge tumbled wrack of molten cloud like the
ruins of some vast temple of the gods of eld. Chasmed buttresses,
battlements overthrown; on the horizon a press of giants, shoulder
against shoulder, climbing slowly to the rescue; in mid-sky a praying
woman; farther afield a huge head, and a severed arm the fingers of
which were clenched in menace: all these things I saw, and a score
others, as the clouds changed from minute to minute in form and
brightness, while the stars began to glow out like clusters of silver
lilies in the eastern sky.

We kept jolting on for so long a time through the twilight lanes, and
the evening darkened so rapidly, that I began to grow frightened. It was
like being lifted out of a dungeon, when the old fly drew up with a
jerk, and a shout of "House there!" and when I looked out and saw that
we were close to the lodge entrance of some park.

Presently a woman, with a child in her arms, came out of the lodge and
proceeded to open the gate for us. Said the driver--"How's Johnny
to-night?"

The woman shouted something in reply, but I don't think the old fellow
heard her.

"Ay, ay," he called out, "Johnny will be a famous young shaver one of
these days;" and with that, he whipped up his horse, and away we went.

The drive up the avenue, for such at the time I judged it to be, and
such it proved to be, did not occupy many minutes. The fly came to a
stand, and the driver got down and opened the door. "Now, young lady,
here you are," he said; and I found myself in front of the main entrance
to Deepley Walls.

It was too dark by this time for me to discern more than the merest
outline of the place. I saw that it was very large, and I noticed that
not even one of its hundred windows showed the least glimmer of light.
It loomed vast, dark and silen