WE had dawdled over our luncheon before Mrs. Macallan arrived atBenjamin's cottage. The ensuing conversation between the old ladyand myself (of which I have only presented a brief abstract)lasted until quite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting inheavy clouds when we got into the carriage, and the autumntwilight began to fall around us while we were still on the road.

The direction in which we drove took us (as well as I couldjudge) toward the great northern suburb of London.

For more than an hour the carriage threaded its way through adingy brick labyrinth of streets, growing smaller and smaller anddirtier and dirtier the further we went. Emerging from thelabyrinth, I noticed in the gathering darkness dreary patches ofwaste ground which seemed to be neither town nor country.Crossing these, we passed some forlorn outlying groups of houseswith dim little scattered shops among them, looking like lostcountry villages wandering on the way to London, disfigured andsmoke-dried already by their journey. Darker and darker anddrearier and drearier the prospect drew, until the carriagestopped at last, and Mrs. Macallan announced, in her sharplysatirical way, that we had reached the end of our journey."Prince Dexter's Palace, my dear," she said. "What do you thinkof it?"

I looked around me, not knowing what to think of it, if the truthmust be told.

We had got out of the carriage, and we were standing on a roughhalf-made gravel-path. Right and left of me, in the dim light, Isaw the half-completed foundations of new houses in their firststage of existence. Boards and bricks were scattered about us. Atplaces gaunt scaffolding poles rose like the branchless trees ofthe brick desert. Behind us, on the other side of the high-road,stretched another plot of waste ground, as yet not built on. Overthe surface of this second desert the ghostly white figures ofvagrant ducks gleamed at intervals in the mystic light. In frontof us, at a distance of two hundred yards or so as well as Icould calculate, rose a black mass, which gradually resolveditself, as my eyes became accustomed to the twilight, into along, low, and ancient house, with a hedge of evergreens and apitch-black paling in front of it. The footman led the way towardthe paling through the boards and the bricks, the oyster shellsand the broken crockery, that strewed the ground. And this was"Prince Dexter's Palace!"

There was a gate in the pitch-black paling, and abell-handle--discovered with great difficulty. Pulling at thehandle, the footman set in motion, to judge by the soundproduced, a bell of prodigious size, fitter for a church than ahouse.

While we were waiting for admission, Mrs. Macallan pointed to thelow, dark line of the old building.

"There is one of his madnesses," she said. "The speculators inthis new neighborhood have offered him I don't know how manythousand pounds for the ground that house stands on. It wasoriginally the manor-house of the district. Dexter purchased itmany years since in one of his freaks of fancy. He has no oldfamily associations with the place; the walls are all buttumbling about his ears; and the money offered would really be ofuse to him. But no! He refused the proposal of the enterprisingspeculators by letter in these words: 'My house is a standingmonument of the picturesque and beautiful, amid the mean,dishonest, and groveling constructions of a mean, dishonest, andgroveling age. I keep my house, gentlemen, as a useful lesson toyou. Look at it while you are building around me, and blush, ifyou can, for your work.' Was there ever such an absurd letterwritten yet? Hush! I hear footsteps in the garden. Here comes hiscousin. His cousin is a woman. I may as well tell you that, oryou might mistake her for a man in the dark."

A rough, deep voice, which I should certainly never have supposedto be the voice of a woman, hailed us from the inner side of thepaling.

"Who's there?"

"Mrs. Macallan," answered my mother-in-law.

"What do you want?"

"We want to see Dexter."

"You can't see him."

"Why not?"

"What did you say your name was?"

"Macallan. Mrs. Macallan. Eustace Macallan's mother. _Now_ do youunderstand?"

The voice muttered and grunted behind the paling, and a keyturned in the lock of the gate.

Admitted to the garden, in the deep shadow of the shrubs, I couldsee nothing distinctly of the woman with the rough voice, exceptthat she wore a man's hat. Closing the gate behind us, without aword of welcome or explanation, she led the way to the house.Mrs. Macallan followed her easily, knowing the place; and Iwalked in Mrs. Macallan's footsteps as closely as I could. "Thisis a nice family," my mother-in-law whispered to me. "Dexter'scousin is the only woman in the house--and Dexter's cousin is anidiot."

We entered a spacious hall with a low ceiling, dimly lighted atits further end by one small oil-lamp. I could see that therewere pictures on the grim, brown walls, but the subjectsrepresented were invisible in the obscure and shadowy light.

Mrs. Macallan addressed herself to the speechless cousin with theman's hat.

"Now tell me," she said. "Why can't we see Dexter?"

The cousin took a sheet of paper off the table, and handed it toMrs. Macallan.

"The Master's writing," said this strange creature, in a hoarsewhisper, as if the bare idea of "the Master" terrified her. "Readit. And stay or go, which you please."

She opened an invisible side door in the wall, masked by one ofthe pictures--disappeared through it like a ghost--and left ustogether alone in the hall.

Mrs. Macallan approached the oil-lamp, and looked by its light atthe sheet of paper which the woman had given to her. I followedand peeped over her shoulder without ceremony. The paperexhibited written characters, traced in a wonderfully large andfirm handwriting. Had I caught the infection of madness in theair of the house? Or did I really see before me these words?

"NOTICE.--My immense imagination is at work. Visions of heroesunroll themselves before me. I reanimate in myself the spirits ofthe departed great. My brains are boiling in my head. Any personswho disturb me, under existing circumstances, will do it at theperil of their lives.--DEXTER."

Mrs. Macallan looked around at me quietly with her sardonicsmile.

"Do you still persist in wanting to be introduced to him?" sheasked.

The mockery in the tone of the question roused my pride. Idetermined that I would not be the first to give way.

"Not if I am putting you in peril of your life, ma'am," Ianswered, pertly enough, pointing to the paper in her hand.

My mother-in-law returned to the hall table, and put the paperback on it without condescending to reply. She then led the wayto an arched recess on our right hand, beyond which I dimlydiscerned a broad flight of oaken stairs.

"Follow me," said Mrs. Macallan, mounting the stairs in the dark."I know where to find him."

We groped our way up the stairs to the first landing. The nextflight of steps, turning in the reverse direction, was faintlyilluminated, like the hall below, by one oil-lamp, placed in someinvisible position above us. Ascending the second flight ofstairs and crossing a short corridor, we discovered the lamp,through the open door of a quaintly shaped circular room, burningon the mantel-piece. Its light illuminated a strip of thicktapestry, hanging loose from the ceiling to the floor, on thewall opposite to the door by which we had entered.

Mrs. Macallan drew aside the strip of tapestry, and, signing meto follow her, passed behind it.

"Listen!" she whispered.

Standing on the inner side of the tapestry, I found myself in adark recess or passage, at the end of which a ray of light fromthe lamp showed me a closed door. I listened, and heard on theother side of the door a shouting voice, accompanied by anextraordinary rumbling and whistling sound, traveling backwardand forward, as well as I could judge, over a great space. Nowthe rumbling and the whistling would reach their climax ofloudness, and would overcome the resonant notes of the shoutingvoice. Then again those louder sounds gradually retreated intodistance, and the shouting voice made itself heard as the moreaudible sound of the two. The door must have been of prodigioussolidity. Listen as intently as I might, I failed to catch thearticulate words (if any) which the voice was pronouncing, and Iwas equally at a loss to penetrate the cause which produced therumbling and whistling sounds.

"What can possibly be going on," I whispered to Mrs. Macallan,"on the other side of that door?"

"Step softly," my mother-in-law answered, "and come and see."

She arranged the tapestry behind us so as completely to shut outthe light in the circular room. Then noiselessly turning thehandle, she opened the heavy door.

We kept ourselves concealed in the shadow of the recess, andlooked through the open doorway.

I saw (or fancied I saw, in the ob scurity) a long room with alow ceiling. The dying gleam of an ill-kept fire formed the onlylight by which I could judge of objects and distances. Redlyilluminating the central portion of the room, opposite to whichwe were standing, the fire-light left the extremities shadowed inalmost total darkness. I had barely time to notice this before Iheard the rumbling and whistling sounds approaching me. A highchair on wheels moved by, through the field of red light,carrying a shadowy figure with floating hair, and arms furiouslyraised and lowered working the machinery that propelled the chairat its utmost rate of speed. "I am Napoleon, at the sunrise ofAusterlitz!" shouted the man in the chair as he swept past me onhis rumbling and whistling wheels, in the red glow of thefire-light. "I give the word, and thrones rock, and kings fall,and nations tremble, and men by tens of thousands fight and bleedand die!" The chair rushed out of sight, and the shouting man init became another hero. "I am Nelson!" the ringing voice criednow. "I am leading the fleet at Trafalgar. I issue my commands,prophetically conscious of victory and death. I see my ownapotheosis, my public funeral, my nation's tears, my burial inthe glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets sing mypraise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the farend of the room and came back. The fantastic and frightfulapparition, man and machinery blended in one--the new Centaur,half man, half chair--flew by me again in the dying light. "I amShakespeare!" cried the frantic creature now. "I am writing'Lear,' the tragedy of tragedies. Ancients and moderns, I am thepoet who towers over them all. Light! light! the lines flow outlike lava from the eruption of my volcanic mind. Light! light!for the poet of all time to write the words that live forever!"He ground and tore his way back toward the middle of the room. Ashe approached the fire-place a last morsel of unburned coal (orwood) burst into momentary flame, and showed the open doorway. Inthat moment he saw us! The wheel-chair stopped with a shock thatshook the crazy old floor of the room, altered its course, andflew at us with the rush of a wild animal. We drew back, just intime to escape it, against the wall of the recess. The chairpassed on, and burst aside the hanging tapestry. The light of thelamp in the circular room poured in through the gap. The creaturein the chair checked his furious wheels, and looked back over hisshoulder with an impish curiosity horrible to see.

"Have I run over them? Have I ground them to powder for presumingto intrude on me?" he said to himself. As the expression of thisamiable doubt passed his lips his eyes lighted on us. His mindinstantly veered back again to Shakespeare and King Lear."Goneril and Regan!" he cried. "My two unnatural daughters, myshe-devil children come to mock at me!"

"Nothing of the sort," said my mother-in-law, as quietly as ifshe were addressing a perfectly reasonable being. "I am your oldfriend, Mrs. Macallan; and I have brought Eustace Macallan'ssecond wife to see you."

The instant she pronounced those last words, "Eustace Macallan'ssecond wife," the man in the chair sprang out of it with a shrillcry of horror, as if she had shot him. For one moment we saw ahead and body in the air, absolutely deprived of the lower limbs.The moment after, the terrible creature touched the floor aslightly as a monkey, on his hands. The grotesque horror of thescene culminated in his hopping away on his hands, at aprodigious speed, until he reached the fire-place in the longroom. There he crouched over the dying embers, shuddering andshivering, and muttering, "Oh, pity me, pity me!" dozens anddozens of times to himself.

This was the man whose advice I had come to ask--who assistance Ihad confidently counted on in my hour of need.