n. Being provided with powerful springs, it shot him up into the air,
whence he relapsed with a series of smaller bounds into a normal sitting
posture. Still holding the lighted candle as best he could, the little
secretary bounced upon that sofa like a tennis ball. And the violent
motion shook him into himself, as it were. His tottering universe
struggled back into shape once more. He remembered vaguely that all this
was somehow a test of his courage and fitness. And this thought,
strengthened by a law of his temperament which forced him to welcome the
sweet, mad terror of the whole adventure, helped to call out the reserves
of his failing courage.

He bounced upon his feet again--those bare feet plastered with candle
grease--and, turning his head, saw the clergyman, of incredible stature,
yet still apparently increasing, already over by the door. He was turning
the key with a hand the size--O horror!--of Spinrobin's breast. The next
moment his vast stooping body filled the entire entrance, blotting out
whole portions of the walls on either side, then was gone from the room.

Leaving the candlestick on the sofa, his heart aflame with a fearful
ecstasy of curiosity, he dashed across the floor in pursuit, but Mr.
Skale, silently and with the swiftness of a river, was already down the
stairs before he had covered half the distance.

Through the framework of the door Spinrobin saw this picture:

Skale, like some awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the hall some
twenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up through the well of the
building till his head and shoulders alone seemed to fill the entire
space beneath the skylight. Though his feet rested unquestionably upon
the ground, his face, huge as a planet in the sky, rose looming and half
lighted above the banisters of this second storey, his tangled locks
sweeping the ceiling, and his beard, like some dark river of hair,
flowing downwards through the night. And this spreading countenance of
cloud it was, hanging in the semi-darkness, that Spinrobin saw turn
slowly towards him across the faint flicker of the candlelight, look
straight down into his face, and smile. The great mouth and eyes
unquestionably smiled. And that smile, for all its vast terror, was
beyond words enchanting--like the spread laughter of a summer landscape.

Among the spaces of the immense visage--reminding him curiously of his
boyhood's conception of the Creator--Spinrobin lost himself and grew