Good heavens! It was _the_ house--her house; and he had first seen it under very similar conditions on the evening of his crash! The clouds swept on, and shadow came where there had been light--just as had happened before. He had not dreamed it, after all. But, nevertheless, his first glimpse of the building had been in the nature of an omen. Considering the fact that it lay a mile or more back from the main road, his subsequently coming to disaster under its very walls was at least an amazing coincidence. Automatically he took out his case and lighted a cigarette, all the time watching the mystery house nestling there far below in its enclosing gardens. Once he glanced away. It was to see what prospect offered of sunlight again flooding that part of the landscape. Even as he looked back, the desired effect came about. Some quality in the atmosphere seemed to bring out details very sharply; and the result was that effected by a reducing glass. He saw the house as through the lens of a camera. Smoke from his newly lighted cigarette rose before his eyes. Abruptly he tossed the cigarette away, and watched--watched; eagerly, fixedly. A tiny but clear-cut figure in the distance, a girl moved in the walled garden! She appeared to be gathering flowers.… The shadow of a cloud crept across and across; until once more the picture was blotted out. Barry’s heart gave a great leap. At crazy speed he swept down the valley road, taking one keen bend on two tires. Of his going he afterward remembered nothing. When, for the second time, he stepped upon the porch of “John Brown’s” house, he recalled the remark of a girl he had once overheard: “Barry Cumberland is picturesquely mad,” she had said. “She was right,” he reflected and pressed the bell. The place looked as it had looked before. All the windows were shaded. There was dust on the porch. No one answered his repeated ringing. In a state bordering upon stupefaction, he went to that side path which led to the garden. He found only a barred gate, at which he stared in unbelieving wonder. Beyond, he could see the door where he had held his interview with the unrelenting caretaker. But all around was silence. To-day there was no rattling of pots and pans. Could it be, as his father had hinted, that imagination was playing tricks with him? Had the vision at the window indeed been the outcome of an injury, and was this phantom of the garden an aftermath of it--a second illusion--a mirage? Back along the ill-kept road he walked to the barrier, where, heedless of possible loss, he had left the Rolls. What ailed him? Was he going mad? Was his interest in this house and its occupants due to frustrated curiosity? If so, did this fully explain his waking and sleeping dreams of a dark-eyed girl in a cloudy robe, watching him from a high balcony?