g door.

"Well, you've done it now," said Symon, in his tranquil fashion.
Then after a pause he added, "I suppose they'll miss us sooner or
later, and no doubt they can get it open; but it may take some
little time."

There was a silence, and then the unconquerable Stinks observed:

"Rotten that I had to leave my electric torch."

"I think," said his uncle, with restraint, "that we are sufficiently
convinced of your interest in electricity."

Then after a pause he remarked, more amiably: "I suppose if I
regretted any of my own impedimenta, it would be the pipe. Though,
as a matter of fact, it's not much fun smoking in the dark.
Everything seems different in the dark."

"Everything is different in the dark," said a third voice, that of
the man who called himself a magician. It was a very musical voice,
and rather in contrast with his sinister and swarthy visage, which
was now invisible. "Perhaps you don't know how terrible a truth that
is. All you see are pictures made by the sun, faces and furniture
and flowers and trees. The things themselves may be quite strange to
you. Something else may be standing now where you saw a table or a
chair. The face of your friend may be quite different in the dark."

A short, indescribable noise broke the stillness. Twyford started
for a second, and then said, sharply:

"Really, I don't think it's a suitable occasion for trying to
frighten a child."

"Who's a child?" cried the indignant Summers, with a voice that had
a crow, but also something of a crack in it. "And who's a funk,
either? Not me."

"I will be silent, then," said the other voice out of the darkness.
"But silence also makes and unmakes."

The required silence remained unbroken for a long time until at last
the clergyman said to Symon in a low voice:

"I suppose it's all right about air?"

"Oh, yes," replied the other aloud; "there's a fireplace and a
chimney in the office just by the door."

A bound and the noise of a falling chair told them that the
irrepressible rising generation had once more thrown itself across
the room. They heard the ejaculation: "A chimney! Why, I'll be--"
and the rest was lost in muffled, but exultant, cries.

The uncle called repeatedly and vainly, groped his way at last to
the opening, and, peering up it, caught a glimpse of a disk of
daylight, which seemed to suggest that the fugitive had vanished in
safety. Making his way back to the group by the glass case, he fell
over