ing
slowly round. He ceased pulling, looked at his watch, and began to pull
again.

"We arrive almost to the moment!" he said; "it is on the very stroke of
noon!"

The top went creaking and revolving for a minute or so. Then he pulled
two other chains, now this, now that, and returned to the first. A
moment more and the chamber grew much clearer: a patch of sunlight had
fallen upon a mirror on the wall opposite that against which the other
leaned, and on the dust I saw the path of the reflected rays to the
mirror on the ground. But from the latter none were returned; they
seemed to go clean through; there was nowhere in the chamber a second
patch of light!

"Where are the sunrays gone?" I cried.

"That I cannot tell," returned Mr. Raven; "--back, perhaps, to where
they came from first. They now belong, I fancy, to a sense not yet
developed in us."

He then talked of the relations of mind to matter, and of senses to
qualities, in a way I could only a little understand, whence he went
on to yet stranger things which I could not at all comprehend. He spoke
much about dimensions, telling me that there were many more than three,
some of them concerned with powers which were indeed in us, but of which
as yet we knew absolutely nothing. His words, however, I confess, took
little more hold of me than the light did of the mirror, for I thought
he hardly knew what he was saying.

Suddenly I was aware that our forms had gone from the mirror, which
seemed full of a white mist. As I gazed I saw, growing gradually visible
beyond the mist, the tops of a range of mountains, which became clearer
and clearer. Soon the mist vanished entirely, uncovering the face of a
wide heath, on which, at some distance, was the figure of a man moving
swiftly away. I turned to address my companion; he was no longer by my
side. I looked again at the form in the mirror, and recognised the wide
coat flying, the black hair lifting in a wind that did not touch me. I
rushed in terror from the place.

CHAPTER IX. I REPENT

I laid the manuscript down, consoled to find that my father had had a
peep into that mysterious world, and that he knew Mr. Raven.

Then I remembered that I had never heard the cause or any circumstance
of my father's death, and began to believe that he must at last have
followed Mr. Raven, and not come back; whereupon I speedily grew ashamed
of my flight. What wondrous facts might I not by this time have gathered
concerni