o infinitely important to
contemplative men. He appeared to be ever yearning for something which
should add robustness to his convictions. After a pause of some moments,
Clifton again addressed me.

"Recollections of moments, months of excitement, of intense power, have
returned! They may not fade again unspoken. You shall know my
long-cherished secret. Younger in years, you may scarcely advise; but,
at least, you may give sympathy that shall confirm my decision. I have
engaged rooms at the neighboring hotel. Come and pass the evening--nay,
the night--with me; for much must be read and thought and spoken before
the black veil of personality can be lifted between us."

It has already been observed that my family were at the seaside. This
circumstance left me sole disposer of my time and localities. How, then,
resist the inclination to see out the adventure upon which I had
stumbled? Let me credit myself also with a worthier motive: I saw that
my companion was in no state to be left to himself,--and, really, there
was no mutual friend to whom I could consign him. Accordingly I offered
my arm in a manner to imply acquiescence in his proposal.

We soon reached the hotel, and ascended to a room in the remote corner
of a spacious wing. Clifton at once turned the key, placed his package
upon the table, and proceeded to employ a stray bit of carpet in
stopping a ventilator which communicated with the entry. Having
satisfied himself that this passage was rendered impervious to sound, he
drew two chairs up to the table, motioned me into one, and planted
himself in the other with the air of a man, in popular phrase, about to
make a night of it.

"Did you ever hear of Herbert Vannelle?" he asked, abruptly.

It can hardly be necessary to say that a substitute is here placed for
the name really mentioned.

I replied in the negative, and asked where the gentleman lived.

"He lives nowhere on earth; he is dead,--just dead."

"A friend of yours?"

"A master once; now a presence eluding, haunting, torturing. He left me
this manuscript; it is a 'Philosophy of the Absolute.'" (Here Clifton
drew from a curiously contrived case of parchment a cluster of pages.)
"It has now twenty-two hours to appear in the present century. You shall
devote the night to reading it, and tell me that I have acted well."

A sultry August evening, a smoky boarding-house lamp, much skirmishing
of mosquitoes, and--a manuscript system of philosophy! The p