My father stood up also, looking paler, I think, than I ever saw him till
then, and he pointed grimly to the door, and said, 'Go.'

Mr. Bryerly pushed me gently back with his hands to my shoulders, and
smiled down from his dark features with an expression quite unintelligible
to me.

I had recovered myself in a second, and withdrew without a word. The last
thing I saw at the door was the tall, slim figure in black, and the dark,
significant smile following me: and then the door was shut and locked, and
the two Swedenborgians were left to their mysteries.

I remember so well the kind of shock and disgust I felt in the certainty
that I had surprised them at some, perhaps, debasing incantation--a
suspicion of this Mr. Bryerly, of the ill-fitting black coat, and white
choker--and a sort of fear came upon me, and I fancied he was asserting
some kind of mastery over my father, which very much alarmed me.

I fancied all sorts of dangers in the enigmatical smile of the lank
high-priest. The image of my father, as I had seen him, it might be,
confessing to this man in black, who was I knew not what, haunted me with
the disagreeable uncertainties of a mind very uninstructed as to the limits
of the marvellous.

I mentioned it to no one. But I was immensely relieved when the sinister
visitor took his departure the morning after, and it was upon this
occurrence that my mind was now employed.

Some one said that Dr. Johnson resembled a ghost, who must be spoken to
before it will speak. But my father, in whatever else he may have resembled