fire, the men went to their beds.




6


It was past midnight, and the house quiet, when Paul determined to
have another look at the mysterious door at the foot of his closet
stairs. He had sat for more than an hour before his bedroom fire,
after bidding Ah Ben good-night, to make sure that the inmates of
Guir House had retired; and as not a sound had been heard since
locking his door, he sincerely hoped they were asleep. Before
descending into the noisome depths, however, he concluded to climb up
into his window, and have another look at the beautiful panorama of
mountain and woodland shimmering in the meagre light of a hazy sky
and a moon past full. The uncertain outline of a distant horizon; the
interminable stretch of forest, which bore away upon every hand; the
rugged heights, now soft and colorless; the aromatic smell of pine
and fir; the distant murmur of falling water; and the assonant
whispering of wind in the tree tops, had all become strangely
fascinating to him, more so than such things had ever been before.
"Never was a house so situated, so lost to the world, so tightly held
in the lap of unregenerate nature," thought Paul; "no laugh of child,
no shout of man, no bark of dog, nor bellowing beast to break the
stillness of the midnight air; an impenetrable, imperturbable, and
silent wilderness shuts out the busy world, as we know it, forever
and forever. It is a fitting place for such witchery as the old man
seems master of, and I do not wonder that he has chosen it for his