ter than before, till in due
course they emerged from the encircling woods and reached the more open
ground about the house. Somehow, in the jostling relations of the walk, a
freedom of intercourse had been established that no amount of formal talk
between four walls could have accomplished. They scraped their dirty
boots vigorously on the iron mat.

"Tired?" asked the clergyman, kindly.

"Winded, Mr. Skale, thank you--nothing more," was the reply. He looked up
at the square mass of the house looming dark against the sky, and the
noise his companion made opening the door--the actual rattle of the iron
knob did it--suddenly brought to him a clear realization of two things:
First, he understood that the whole way from the station Mr. Skale had
been watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him, though by ways
and methods so subtle that they had escaped his observation at the time;
secondly, that he was already so caught in the network of this
personality, vaster and more powerful than his own, that escape if he
desired it would be exceedingly difficult. Like a man in a boat upon the
upper Niagara river, he already felt the tug and suction of the current
below--the lust of a great adventure drawing him forward. Mr. Skale's
hand upon his shoulder as they entered the house was the symbol of
_that_. The noise of the door closing behind him was the passing of the
last bit of quiet water across which a landing to the bank might still
have been possible.

Faint streamers from the dark, inscrutable house of fear reached him even
then and left their vague, undecipherable signatures upon the surface of
his soul. The forces that vibrated so strangely in the atmosphere of Mr.
Skale were already playing about his own person, gathering him in like a
garment. Yet while he shuddered, he liked it. Was he not already losing
something of his own insignificant and diminutive self?

IV

The clergyman, meanwhile, had closed the heavy door, shutting out the
darkness, and now led the way across a large, flagged hall into a room,
ablaze with lamp and fire, the walls lined thickly with books, furnished
cozily if plainly. The laden tea table, and a kettle hissing merrily on
the hob, were pleasant to look upon, but what instantly arrested the gaze
of the secretary was the face of the old woman in cap and
apron--evidently the housekeeper already referred to as "Mrs." Mawle--who
stood waiting to pour out tea. For about her worn and wrink