ween his mother and father,
and the last also; for shortly after his advent the latter parent, a
retired undertaker by profession, failed from this world. The widow
was much younger than her husband, and handsome to boot. Nevertheless,
several years passed before she married again. Her second lord was
likewise elderly, but differed from the first in being enormously
wealthy. The issue of this union was a daughter, the Helen of our
story, a pretty, dark-eyed little thing, petted and indulged by all
the family, and reigning undisputed over all.

Meanwhile the old brick house had been deserted, Mrs. Glyphic having
accompanied her second husband to his sumptuous residence in Brooklyn.
But in process of time Hiero (or, as he was then called, Henry) took
it into his head to return to the original family mansion and live
there. No objection was made; in truth, Henry's oddities,
awkwardnesses, and propensity to dabble in queer branches of research
and experiment may have allayed the parting pangs. Back he blundered,
therefore, to the banks of the Hudson, and established himself in his
birthplace. What he did there during the next few years will never be
known. Grisly stories about the man in the brick house were current
among the country people. A devil was said to be his familiar friend;
nay, it was whispered that he himself was the arch-fiend! But nothing
positively supernatural, or even unholy, was ever proved to have taken
place. The recluse had the command of as much money as he could spend,
and no doubt he wrought with it miracles beyond the vulgar
comprehension. His mind had no more real depth than a looking-glass
with a crack in it, and its images were disjointed and confused. There
are many such men, but few possess unlimited means of carrying their
crack-brained fancies into fact.

During this--which may be called the second--period of Glyphic's
career, he made several anomalous additions to the brick house, all
after designs of his own. He moreover furnished it anew throughout, in
a manner that made the upholsterers stare. Each room--so reads the
legend--was fitted up in the style of a different country, according
to Glyphic's notion of it! He was said to live in one apartment or
another according as it was his whim to be Spaniard, Turk, Russian,
Hindoo, or Chinaman. He also applied himself to gardening, and
enclosed seven hundred acres of ground adjoining the house with a
picket-fence, forerunner of the famous bri