light wood, a sort of big wooden pipe, led down through the
floor, probably to the ground-floor or basement, much as a mast
goes down through a ship's decks into the hold. It was slowly
revolving, being worked by some simple, not very strong
mill-contrivance downstairs. A shelf had been fixed up inside the
pipe. On the shelf (as I could see by looking in) was a tallow
candle in a sconce. Two oval bits of red glass, let into the
wood, made the eyes of this lantern-devil. The mouth was a smear
of some gleaming stuff, evidently some chemical. This was all the
monster which had frightened me. The clacking noise was made by
the machine which moved it round. As for the owl, that was
probably painted with the same chemical. People were more
superstitious then than now. I have no doubt that an ignorant
person like Ephraim, who had lived all his life in London, had
been scared out of his wits by this machine. Like most ignorant
people, he probably reckoned the thing as devilish, merely
because he did not understand it. One or two neighbours, a
housemaid or so, perhaps, had seen it, too. On the strength of
their reports the house had gotten a bad name. The two unoccupied
floors had failed to get tenants, while Mr. Jermyn, the contriver
of the whole, had been ]eft alone, as no doubt he had planned. I
thought that Londoners must be a very foolish people to be so
easily misled. Now that I am older, I see that Londoners often
live in very narrow grooves. They are apt to be frightened at
anything to which they have not been accustomed; unless, of
course, it is a war, when they can scream about themselves so
loudly that they forget that they are screaming.

I examined the machine critically, by its own candle, which I
removed for the purpose. I meant to fix up one very like it in