a cold gray stone,
rough-hewed and heavy. Through its arch passed then a file of
gray-cowled monks, their faces concealed. Each carried a torch, whose
flickering, wavering light cast weird cowled figures on the gray stone,
and in their midst was borne a bier, covered with white. And as the
deep bell boomed on through all the vision, like a subtle thrilling
presence, Bennington seemed to himself to stand, finger on lip, the
eternal custodian of the Secret of it all--the secret that each of
these cowled figures was a Man--a divine soul and a body, with ears,
and eyes, and a brain; that he had thoughts, and his life that is and
is to come was of these thoughts; that there beat hearts beneath that
gray, and that their voices must not be heeded; that in the morning
these wearied eyes awaited but the eve, and that the evening brought no
hope for a new day; that these silent, awesome beings lived within the
heavy stones alone with monotony, until the bell tolled, as now, and
they were carried through the arched doorway into the night; and, above
all, that to each there were sixty minutes in the hour, and twenty-four
hours in the day, and years and years of these days. This was the
Secret, and he was its custodian. None of the others knew of it; but
its awfulness made him sad and stern. He checked the days, he numbered
the hours, he counted the minutes rigorously lest one escape. One did
escape, and he turned back to catch it, and pursued it far away from
the stone doorway and the dull twilight, and even the sound of the
bell, off into a land where there were many hills and valleys, among
which the fugitive Minute hid elusively. And he pursued the Minute,
calling upon it to come to him, and the name by which he called it was
Mary. Then he saw that the square of the window had become yellow with
the sun, and that through it he could hear plainly the voices of the
Leslies talking in high tones.

His brain was very clear, more so than usual, and he not only received
many impressions, and ordered them with ease and despatch, but his very
senses seemed more than ordinarily acute. He could distinguish even by
day, when the night stillness had withdrawn its favouring conditions,
the borings of the sawdust insects in the logs of the cabin. Only he
was very tired. His hands seemed a long distance away, as though it
would require an extraordinary effort of the will to lift them. So he
lay quiet and listened.

The conversation, of whic