“Not at all,” answered the elder man complacently. “I have simply presented the house to you as it stood a hundred years ago. The impression you have had of it is quite as truthful as the one now before you. Indeed, it is as truthful as the view you now have of yonder star,” he pointed to a twinkling luminary in the north; “for time has put out its fires more than a thousand years ago, so that you now behold it as it then was, and not as it is to-night.” “This hypnotism of yours is quite undoing me,” answered Paul, passing his hand across his eyes. “And yet what you now behold is not hypnotism at all, but fact, as the world would call it. It is what the vast majority of all men would see if here to-night. But I perceive that it is troubling you. Let us return to our old place by the fire, and the house as it was a century ago. In that state of the past I think you will find more comfort than in the melancholy ruin before us.” They climbed back over the fallen piles of bricks, stone, and mortar; and then Ah Ben lifted his withered hand, and touching Henley lightly upon the forehead, said: “And now we are back in our old seats, just as they used to be in the days of yore!” Paul looked about him. The fire was burning brightly. The pictures had been restored to their places on the walls. The old lamp and the strangely decorated staircase were all restored, just as he had left them a few minutes before. He gazed long and earnestly at the scene around him, and then fixing his eyes upon Ah Ben, helplessly, said: “If then I am to understand that this is no longer real, but that the old ruin just beheld is the existing fact, might I ask in what part of the wreck you and Miss Guir have been able to fix your abode, for I saw nothing but crumbling walls--a roofless ruin?” “The question you ask involves a story, and if you care to listen I will tell it to you, although the hour is late and the night far gone.” “I should enjoy nothing more,” said Paul. And the men filled and lighted their pipes, and Henley listened while Ah Ben told him the following: 9