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


"In the early settlement of this State, an Englishman by the name of
Guir pre-empted a large body of land, near the center of which he
erected this house. Although his intention in coming from the old
country was to make his permanent home in the colony, his reasons for
doing so were quite different from those which usually induce
immigration. Guir was an artist, and a man of some means; and his
object in colonizing was not so much to cultivate the soil, or to