Next morning about ten, in accordance with my friend’s invitation, I ascended the steps of the Burnham mansion, rang the bell, and sent in my card. I was evidently expected, as the servant requested me to follow him, and led the way downstairs. There, in a small court-yard sacred to himself, and in which, together with two apartments opening thereon, my friend conducted his experiments, I found him in his shirt-sleeves, superintending the disposition of the ponderous mass which had excited my curiosity the day before on the sea-wall. The workmen had just succeeded in hoisting it on to a strong and massive trestle-work, some three feet from the ground, and upon this the nondescript, oblong package, swathed with sacking and bound with ropes, now rested. “There!” said Burnham, as he settled with the men and turned the key of the door leading into the ordinary court-yard of the house; “the most laborious part of the job is over. It was no easy matter getting the package up here. But now, as publicity at this stage must on every consideration be avoided, I must ask you to stand ready to lend me a hand when necessary. Better leave your coat in the laboratory or in the studio--which you please--you can suit yourself.” The “laboratory” and the “studio” were the respective names of the two rooms opening onto the court-yard where we were now standing, which was itself separated, as I have said, from the main court-yard of the building by a tolerably high wall, opposite which were the entrances and windows of the rooms aforesaid, which had been originally intended for outhouses of some sort. The other two sides of this little court-yard were blind-walls of the house itself. Certainly, if secrecy were the requisite aimed at in my friend’s enterprise, whatever it might be, a happier place could not have been chosen. The “laboratory” and the “studio,” while each opened on the court, and while there was also intercommunication between the rooms, differed greatly in interior arrangement, as well as in the uses to which they were put. The laboratory was fitted up with benches, tables, and shelves, littered with chemical, optical, electrical, and photographic apparatus, zoölogical and botanical specimens, _et hoc genus omne_; a perfect scientific chaos, in short, without a semblance of law and order. The studio, on the other hand, was richly and luxuriously furnished and kept in scrupulous order by Burnham’s own valet, who, I noticed, however, was not there at this time.