chimney-pieces and central hooks for chandeliers. Beyond and behind
stretched out the wings; coming to what appeared to be the end of the
house on west, there unexpectedly began a new series of rooms turning
to the north, each with its outside door; looking for a corresponding
labyrinth on the eastern side, there was nothing but a blank wall. The
blind stairway went up in a kind of dark well, and once up it was a
difficult matter to get down without a plunge from top to bottom,
since the undefended opening was just where no one would expect to
find it. Sometimes an angle was so arbitrarily walled up that you felt
sure there must be a secret chamber there and furtively rapped on the
wall to catch the hollow echo within. Then again you opened a door,
expecting to step into the wilderness of a garden, and found yourself
in a set of little rooms running off on a tangent, one after the
other, and ending in a windowless closet and an open cistern. But the
Agency gloried in its irregularities, and defied criticism. The
original idea of its architect--if there was any--had vanished; but
his work remained a not unpleasing variety to summer visitors
accustomed to city houses, all built with a definite purpose, and one
front door.

After some years of wandering in foreign lands, I returned to my own
country, and took up the burden of old associations whose sadness time
had mercifully softened. The summer was over; September had begun, but
there came to me a great wish to see Mackinac once more; to look again
upon the little white fort where I had lived with Archie, my soldier
nephew killed at Shiloh. The steamer took me safely across Lake Erie,
up the brimming Detroit River, through the enchanted region of the St.
Clair flats, and out into broad Lake Huron; there, off Thunder Bay, a
gale met us, and for hours we swayed between life and death.