he had seen in every detail.

"Then it's magic!" said Henley, "for surely no room can be visible
through that chimney."

"That," answered Ah Ben, "is mere assertion, which you can never
prove."

"Do you mean to tell me that the thing was real? There is a secret
about this house which I do not understand!"

His manner was excited. He felt that he had been the dupe of the man
before him, the prey to some clever trick; the thing was too
preposterous, too unreasonable.

"Be calm," said Ah Ben; "there is nothing in this that should disturb
you. The room has disappeared from our sight, and will no more
trouble us. Shall we have another pipe?"

The words had an instantaneous effect, so that Paul resumed his seat
and pipe, as if nothing had happened. For several minutes he sat
silently gazing at vacancy, and listening to the north wind as it
moaned through the old pines. He was trying to account for what he
had seen, but could not. The mystery was deepening into an
overpowering gloom. The house, with its eccentric inmates; the girl
Dorothy, with her freaks and manner of living; the odd circumstance
of the stairway in his closet; these, and other things, flashed upon
his memory in a confused jumble, and seemed as inexplicable as the
vision just witnessed through the chimney.