the right
setting for--for--

Unbidden into his mind a queer, new thought shot suddenly, interrupting
the flow of ideas. He never understood how or whence it came, but with
the picture of all the empty rooms in the corridor about him, he
received the sharp unwelcome impression that when Mr. Skale described the
house as empty it was really nothing of the sort. Utterly unannounced,
the uneasy conviction took possession of him that the building was
actually--populated. It was an extraordinary idea to have. There was
absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support it. And with it
flashed across his memory echoes of that unusual catechism he had been
subjected to--in particular the questions whether he believed in
spirits,--"other life," as Skale termed it. Sinister suspicions flashed
through his imagination as he lay there listening to the ashes dropping
in the grate and watching the shadows cloak the room. Was it possible
that there were occupants of these rooms that the man had somehow evoked
from the interstellar spaces and crystallized by means of sound into form
and shape--_created?_

Something freezing swept into him from a region far beyond the world. He
shivered. These cold terrors that grip the soul suddenly without apparent
cause, whence do they come? Why, out of these rather extravagant and
baseless speculations, should have emerged this sense of throttling dread
that appalled him? And why, once again, should he have felt convinced
that the ultimate nature of the clergyman's great experiment was impious,
fraught with a kind of heavenly danger, "unpermissible?"

Spinrobin, lying there shivering in his big bed, could not guess. He only
knew that by way of relief his mind instinctively sought out Miriam, and
so found peace. Curled up in a ball between the sheets his body presently
slept, while his mind, intensely active, traveled off into that vast
inner prairie of his childhood days and called her name aloud. And
presumably she came to him at once, for his sleep was undisturbed and his
dreams uncommonly sweet, and he woke thoroughly refreshed eight hours
later, to find Mrs. Mawle standing beside his bed with thin bread and
butter and a cup of steaming tea.

II

For the rest, the new secretary fell quickly and easily into the routine
of this odd little household, for he had great powers of adaptability.
At first the promise of excitement faded. The mornings were spent in the
study of Hebrew, Mr. Skale