the maxims of the philosophy to which he made pretence, in founding
speculations audacious and abstruse upon unanalogous comparisons that
would have been fantastic even in a poet. And Sir Philip, after another
pause, resumed with a half smile,--

"After what I have said, it will perhaps not very much surprise
you when I add that but for my belief in the powers I ascribe to trance,
we should not be known to each other at this moment."

"How? Pray explain!"

"Certain circumstances, which I trust to relate to you in detail
hereafter, have imposed on me the duty to discover, and to bring human
laws to bear upon, a creature armed with terrible powers of evil. This
monster, for without metaphor, monster it is, not man like ourselves, has,
by arts superior to those of ordinary fugitives, however dexterous in
concealment, hitherto for years eluded my research. Through the trance
of an Arab child, who, in her waking state, never heard of his existence,
I have learned that this being is in England, is in L----. I am here to
encounter him. I expect to do so this very night, and under this very
roof."

"Sir Philip!"

"And if you wonder, as you well may, why I have been talking to you with
this startling unreserve, know that the same Arab child, on whom I thus
implicitly rely, informs me that your life is mixed up with that of the
being I seek to unmask and disarm,--to be destroyed by his arts or his
agents, or to combine in the causes by which the destroyer himself shall
be brought to destruction."