unmistakably sinister lines in
their faces. The next day the houskeeping cook came to the door--a buxom
old woman with a look and a ready smile, and something in her manner
which suggested that she had not begun life quite so respectably as she
was now ending it. She seemed to be decidedly satisfied with my personal
appearance; talked to me on indifferent matters with great glibness;
but suddenly became silent and diplomatic the moment I looked toward the
stair and asked innocently if she had to go up and down them often in
the course of the day. As for the doctor himself he was unapproachable
on the subject of the mysterious upper regions. If I introduced
chemistry in general into the conversation he begged me not to spoil his
happy holiday hours with his daughter and me, by leading him back to his
work-a-day thoughts. If I referred to his own experiments in particular
he always made a joke about being afraid of my chemical knowledge, and
of my wishing to anticipate him in his discoveries. In brief, after a
week's run of the lower regions, the upper part of the red-brick
house and the actual nature of its owner's occupations still remained
impenetrable mysteries to me, pry, ponder, and question as I might.

Thinking of this on the river-bank, in connection with the distressing
scene which I had just had with Alicia, I found that the mysterious
obstacle at which she had hinted, the mysterious life led by her
father, and the mysterious top of the house that had hitherto defied
my curiosity, all three connected themselves in my mind as links of the
same chain. The obstacle to my marrying Alicia was the thing that most
troubled me. If I only found out what it was, and if I made light of
it (which I was resolved beforehand to do, let it be what it might), I
should most probably end by overcoming her scruples, and taking her away
from the ominous red-brick house in the character of my wife. But how
was I to make the all-important discovery?

Cudgeling my brains for an answer to this question, I fell at last into
reasoning upon it, by a process of natural logic, something after this
fashion: The mysterious top of the house is connected with the
doctor, and the doctor is connected with the obstacle which has made
wretchedness between Alicia and me. If I can only get to the top of the
house, I may get also to the root of the obstacle. It is a dangerous and
an uncertain experiment; but, come what may of it, I will try and find