"I came here in the simplest way in the world," he went on, "though I am no less surprised than you to find myself in your presence." "The thing is to me a marvel," said Hester. "It shall not be such a moment longer. I was called to see a patient. When I went to return as I came, I found the door by which I had entered locked. I then remembered that I had passed a door on the stair, and went back to try it. It was bolted on the side to the stair. I withdrew the bolts, opened the door gently, and beheld one of the most impressive sights I ever saw. Shall I tell you what I saw?" "Do," answered Hester. "I saw," said Christopher with solemnity, "the light shining in the darkness, and the darkness comprehending it not--six candles, and only the up-turned face of the dead, and the down-turned face of the sleeping! I seemed to look into the heart of things, and see the whole waste universe waiting for the sonship, for the redemption of the body, the visible life of men! I saw that love, trying to watch by death, had failed, because the thing that is not needs not to be watched. I saw all this and more. I think I must have unconsciously pushed the door against the wall, for somehow I made a noise with it, and you woke." Hester's face alone showed that she understood him. She turned and looked at Moxy to calm the emotion to which she would not give scope. Christopher stood silent, as if brooding on what he had seen. She could not ask him to sit down, but she must understand how he had got into the house. Where was his patient? "In the next house, of course!" she concluded. But the thing wanted looking into! That door must be secured on their side? Their next midnight visitor might not be so welcome as this, whose heart burned to the same labour as her own! "But what we really want," she thought, "is to have more not fewer of our doors open, if they be but the right ones for the angels to come and go!" "I never saw that door open before," she said, "and none of us knew where it led. We took it for granted it was into the next house, but the old lady was so cross,--" Here she checked herself; for if Mr. Christopher had just come from that house, he might be a friend of the old lady's! "It goes into no lady's house, so far as I understand," said Christopher. "The stair leads to a garret--I should fancy over our heads here--much higher up, though." "Would you show me how you came in?" said Hester. "With pleasure," he answered, and taking one of the candles, led the way. "I would not let the young woman leave her husband to show me out," he went on. "When I found myself a prisoner, I thought I would try this door before periling the sleep of a patient in the small-pox. You seem to have it all round you here!"