I was not in the least frightened. I crept cautiously along the floor, on tip-toe, to examine the contrivance. A hollow shaft of 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 left 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.