k behind
him. The lines were of fire.

Oh, how beautiful, how grand, how glorious, it all was!

[Illustration: THE MYSTERIOUS ARCHITECT.]

Fretwork, spandrels, and steeples. It _was_--it _was_ the very
design that had haunted the poor architect, that flitted across his
mind in dreams but left no memory.

"Will you have my plan?" asked the old man.

"I will do all you ask."

"Meet me at the city gate to-morrow at midnight."

The architect returned to Cologne, the image of the marvellous
temple glowing in his mind.

"I shall be immortal," he said; "my name will never die. But," he
added, "it is the price of my soul. No masses can help me, doomed,
doomed forever!"

He told his strange story to his old nurse on his return home.

She went to consult the priest.

"Tell him," said the priest to the old woman, "to secure the design
before he signs the contract. As soon as he gets the plan into his
hand let him present to the old man, who is a demon, the relics of
the martyrs and the sign of the cross."

At midnight he appeared at the gate. There stood the little old man.

"Here is your design," said the latter, handing him a roll of
parchment. "Now you shall sign the bond that gives me yourself in
payment."

The architect grasped the plan.

"Satan, begone!" he thundered; "in the name of this cross, and of
St. Ursula, begone!"

"Thou hast foiled me," said the old man, his eyes glowing in the
darkness like fire. "But I will have my revenge. Your church shall
never be completed, and your name shall never be known in the future
to mankind."

"The Cathedral of Cologne is unfinished, and its architect's name is
unknown. It may harm the story, but it is but just to say that many of
the old cathedrals of Europe are in these respects like that of
Cologne.

"We were impatient to visit the cathedral on our arrival at Cologne.
The structure stood as it were _over_ the city, like its presiding
genius; and so it was. Wherever we went the great roofs loomed above
us in the air.

"The interior did not disappoint us, even after all we had seen in
other cathedral towns. It was like a forest: the columns were like
tree stems of a vast open woodland, the groined arches appearing like
interweaving boughs. The gorgeous windows were like a sunset through
the trees. The air was dusky in the arches, but near the lofty windows
vivid with color.

"It was Sunday.