something very grand in the silence and loneliness of the scene,—­and something very pitiful too, so I thought, about my own self, toiling up the rocky path in mingled hope and fear towards that grim pile of dark stone towers and high forbidding walls, where it was just possible I might meet with but a discouraging reception.  Yet with the letter from him who signed himself ‘Your lover’ lying against my heart, I felt I had a talisman to open doors even more closely barred.  Nevertheless, my courage gave way a little when I at last stood before the heavy iron gates set in a lofty archway of stone through which I could see nothing but cavernous blackness.  The road I had followed ended in a broad circular sweep opposite this archway, and a few tall pines twisted and gnarled in bough and stem, as though the full force of many storm winds had battered and bent them out of their natural shapes, were the only relief to the barrenness of the ground.  An iron chain with a massive ring at the end suggested itself as the possible means of pulling a bell or otherwise attracting attention; but for some minutes I had not the boldness to handle it.

I stood gazing at the frowning portal with a sense of utter loneliness and desolation,—­the quick, resistless impulse that had fired me to make the journey and which, as it were, had driven me along by its own impetus, suddenly died away into a dreary consciousness of inadequateness and folly on my own part,—­and I began to reproach myself for yielding so utterly to the casual influence of one who, after all, must in a reasonable way be considered a stranger.  For what was Rafel Santoris to me?  Merely an old college friend of the man who for a fortnight had been my host, and with whom he chanced to renew acquaintanceship during a yachting tour.  Anything more simple and utterly commonplace never occurred,—­ yet, here was I full of strange impressions and visions, which were possibly only the result of clever hypnotism, practised on me because the hypnotist had possibly discovered in my temperament some suitable ‘subject’ matter for an essay of his skill.  And I had so readily succumbed to his influence as to make a journey of hundreds of miles to a place I had never heard of before on the chance of seeing a man of whom I knew nothing!—­except—­that, according to what Rafel Santoris had said of him, he was the follower of a great psychic Teacher whom once I had known.

Such doubtful and darkening thoughts as these, chasing one another rapidly through my brain, made me severely accuse myself of rash and unpardonable folly in all I had done or was doing,—­and I was almost on the point of turning away and retracing my steps, when a sudden ray of light, not of the sun, struck itself sharply as it were before my eyes and hurt them with its blinding glitter.  It was like a whip of fire lashing my hesitating mind, and it startled me into instant action.  Without pausing further to think what I was about, I went straight up to the