ted
by electricity, and that the plant was not in operation. By accident
I stumbled across a tabouret with smoking materials, and found a half
dozen matches. The first one showed us the magnitude of the room we
stood in, and revealed also a brass candle-stick by the open fireplace,
a candle-stick almost four feet high, supporting a candle of similar
colossal proportions. It was Hotchkiss who discovered that it had been
recently lighted. He held the match to it and peered at it over his
glasses.

"Within ten minutes," he announced impressively, "this candle has been
burning. Look at the wax! And the wick! Both soft."

"Perhaps it's the damp weather," I ventured, moving a little nearer to
the circle of light. A gust of wind came in just then, and the flame
turned over on its side and threatened demise. There was something
almost ridiculous in the haste with which we put down the window and
nursed the flicker to life.

The peculiarly ghost-like appearance of the room added to the
uncanniness of the situation. The furniture was swathed in white covers
for the winter; even the pictures wore shrouds. And in a niche between
two windows a bust on a pedestal, similarly wrapped, one arm extended
under its winding sheet, made a most life-like ghost, if any ghost can
be life-like.

In the light of the candle we surveyed each other, and we were objects
for mirth. Hotchkiss was taking off his sodden shoes and preparing to
make himself comfortable, while I hung my muddy raincoat over the ghost
in the corner. Thus habited, he presented a rakish but distinctly more
comfortable appearance.

"When these people built," Hotchkiss said, surveying the huge dimensions
of the room, "they must have bought a mountain and built all over it.
What a room!"

It seemed to be a living-room, although Hotchkiss remarked that it
was much more like a dead one. It was probably fifty feet long and
twenty-five feet wide. It was very high, too, with a domed ceiling,
and a gallery ran around the entire room, about fifteen feet above the
floor. The candle light did not penetrate beyond the dim outlines of the
gallery rail, but I fancied the wall there hung with smaller pictures.

Hotchkiss had discovered a fire laid in the enormous fireplace, and in a
few minutes we were steaming before a cheerful blaze. Within the radius
of its light and heat, we were comfortable again. But the brightness
merely emphasized the gloom of the ghostly corners. We talked in