At

first the secretary took him for a stranger, but when he looked up and

their eyes met, a sense of familiarity flashed across him, and for a

second or two Jones imagined he was staring at a man he had known years

before. For, barring the beard, it was the face of an elderly clerk who

had occupied the next desk to his own when he first entered the service

of the insurance company, and had shown him the most painstaking

kindness and sympathy in the early difficulties of his work. But a

moment later the illusion passed, for he remembered that Thorpe had

been dead at least five years. The similarity of the eyes was obviously

a mere suggestive trick of memory.

The two men stared at one another for several seconds, and then

Jones began to act instinctively, and because he had to. He

crossed over and took the vacant seat at the other’s table, facing him;

for he felt it was somehow imperative to explain why he was late, and

how it was he had almost forgotten the engagement altogether.

No honest excuse, however, came to his assistance, though his mind

had begun to work furiously.

“Yes, you are late,” said the man quietly, before he could

find a single word to utter. “But it doesn’t matter. Also, you had

forgotten the appointment, but that makes no difference either.”

“I knew—that there was an engagement,” Jones stammered, passing his

hand over his forehead; “but somehow—”

“You will recall it presently,” continued the other in a gentle

voice, and smiling a little. “It was in deep sleep last night we

arranged this, and the unpleasant occurrences of to-day have for the

moment obliterated it.”

A faint memory stirred within him as the man spoke, and a grove of

trees with moving forms hovered before his eyes and then vanished

again, while for an instant the stranger seemed to be capable of

self-distortion and to have assumed vast proportions, with wonderful

flaming eyes.

“Oh!” he gasped. “It was there—in the other region?”

“Of course,” said the other, with a smile that illumined his whole

face. “You will remember presently, all in good time, and meanwhile you

have no cause to feel afraid.”

There was a wonderful soothing quality in the man’s voice, like the

whispering of a great wind, and the clerk felt calmer at once. They sat

a little while longer, but he could not remember that they talked much

or ate anything. He only recalled afterwards that the head waiter came

up and whispered something in his ear, and that he glanced round and

saw the other people were looking at him curiously, some of them

laughing, and that his companion then got up and led the way out of the

restaurant.

They walked hurriedly through the streets, neither of them speaking;

and Jones was so intent upon getting back the whole history of the

affair from the region of deep sleep, that he barely noticed the way

they took. Yet it was clear he knew where they were bound for just as

well as his companion, for he crossed the streets often ahead of him,

diving down alleys without hesitation, and the other followed always

without correction.

The pavements were very full, and the usual night crowds of London

were surging to and fro in the glare of the shop lights, but somehow no

one impeded their rapid movements, and they seemed to pass through the

people as if they were smoke. And, as they went, the pedestrians and

traffic grew less and less, and they soon passed the Mansion House and

the deserted space in front of the Royal Exchange, and so on down

Fenchurch Street and within sight of the Tower of London, rising dim

and shadowy in the smoky air.

Jones remembered all this perfectly well, and thought it was his

intense preoccupation that made the distance seem so short. But it was

when the Tower was left behind and they turned northwards that he began

to notice how altered everything was, and saw that they were in a

neighbourhood where houses were suddenly scarce, and lanes and fields

beginning, and that their only light was the stars overhead. And, as

the deeper consciousness more and more asserted itself to the exclusion

of the surface happenings of his mere body during the day, the sense of

exhaustion vanished, and he realised that he was moving somewhere in

the region of causes behind the veil, beyond the gross deceptions of

the senses, and released from the clumsy spell of space and time.

Without great surprise, therefore, he turned and saw that his

companion had altered, had shed his overcoat and black hat, and was

moving beside him absolutely without sound. For a brief second

he saw him, tall as a tree, extending through space like a great

shadow, misty and wavering of outline, followed by a sound like wings

in the darkness; but, when he stopped, fear clutching at his heart, the

other resumed his former proportions, and Jones could plainly see his

normal outline against the green field behind.

Then the secretary saw him fumbling at his neck, and at the same

moment the black beard came away from the face in his hand.

“Then you are Thorpe!” he gasped, yet somehow without

overwhelming surprise.

They stood facing one another in the lonely lane, trees meeting

overhead and hiding the stars, and a sound of mournful sighing among

the branches.

“I am Thorpe,” was the answer in a voice that almost seemed part of

the wind. “And I have come out of our far past to help you, for my debt

to you is large, and in this life I had but small opportunity to

repay.”

Jones thought quickly of the man’s kindness to him in the office,

and a great wave of feeling surged through him as he began to remember

dimly the friend by whose side he had already climbed, perhaps through

vast ages of his soul’s evolution.

“To help me now?” he whispered.

“You will understand me when you enter into your real memory and

recall how great a debt I have to pay for old faithful kindnesses of

long ago,” sighed the other in a voice like falling wind.

“Between us, though, there can be no question of debt,” Jones

heard himself saying, and remembered the reply that floated to him on

the air and the smile that lightened for a moment the stern eyes facing

him.

“Not of debt, indeed, but of privilege.”

Jones felt his heart leap out towards this man, this old friend,

tried by centuries and still faithful. He made a movement to seize his

hand. But the other shifted like a thing of mist, and for a moment the

clerk’s head swam and his eyes seemed to fail.

“Then you are dead?” he said under his breath with a slight

shiver.

“Five years ago I left the body you knew,” replied Thorpe. “I tried

to help you then instinctively, not fully recognising you. But now I

can accomplish far more.”

With an awful sense of foreboding and dread in his heart, the

secretary was beginning to understand.

“It has to do with—with—?”

“Your past dealings with the Manager,” came the answer, as the wind

rose louder among the branches overhead and carried off the remainder

of the sentence into the air.

Jones’s memory, which was just beginning to stir among the deepest

layers of all, shut down suddenly with a snap, and he followed his

companion over fields and down sweet-smelling lanes where the air was

fragrant and cool, till they came to a large house, standing gaunt and

lonely in the shadows at the edge of a wood. It was wrapped in utter

stillness, with windows heavily draped in black, and the clerk, as he

looked, felt such an overpowering wave of sadness invade him that his

eyes began to burn and smart, and he was conscious of a desire to shed

tears.

The key made a harsh noise as it turned in the lock, and when the

door swung open into a lofty hall they heard a confused sound of

rustling and whispering, as of a great throng of people pressing

forward to meet them. The air seemed full of swaying movement, and

Jones was certain he saw hands held aloft and dim faces claiming

recognition, while in his heart, already oppressed by the approaching

burden of vast accumulated memories, he was aware of the uncoiling

of something that had been asleep for ages.

As they advanced he heard the doors close with a muffled thunder

behind them, and saw that the shadows seemed to retreat and shrink away

towards the interior of the house, carrying the hands and faces with

them. He heard the wind singing round the walls and over the roof, and

its wailing voice mingled with the sound of deep, collective breathing

that filled the house like the murmur of a sea; and as they walked up

the broad staircase and through the vaulted rooms, where pillars rose

like the stems of trees, he knew that the building was crowded, row

upon row, with the thronging memories of his own long past.

“This is the House of the Past,” whispered Thorpe beside him,

as they moved silently from room to room; “the house of your past. It is full from cellar to roof with the memories of what you have

done, thought, and felt from the earliest stages of your evolution

until now.

“The house climbs up almost to the clouds, and stretches back into

the heart of the wood you saw outside, but the remoter halls are filled

with the ghosts of ages ago too many to count, and even if we were able

to waken them you could not remember them now. Some day, though, they

will come and claim you, and you must know them, and answer their

questions, for they can never rest till they have exhausted themselves

again through you, and justice has been perfectly worked out.

“But now follow me closely, and you shall see the particular memory

for which I am permitted to be your guide, so that you may know and

understand a great force in your present life, and may use the sword of

justice, or rise to the level of a great forgiveness, according to your

degree of power.”

Icy thrills ran through the trembling clerk, and as he walked slowly

beside his companion he heard from the vaults below, as well as from

more distant regions of the vast building, the stirring and sighing of

the serried ranks of sleepers, sounding in the still air like a chord

swept from unseen strings stretched somewhere among the very

foundations of the house.

Stealthily, picking their way among the great pillars, they moved up

the sweeping staircase and through several dark corridors and halls,

and presently stopped outside a small door in an archway where the

shadows were very deep.

“Remain close by my side, and remember to utter no cry,” whispered

the voice of his guide, and as the clerk turned to reply he saw his

face was stern to whiteness and even shone a little in the darkness.

The room they entered seemed at first to be pitchy black, but

gradually the secretary perceived a faint reddish glow against the

farther end, and thought he saw figures moving silently to and fro.

“Now watch!” whispered Thorpe, as they pressed close to the wall

near the door and waited. “But remember to keep absolute silence. It is

a torture scene.”

Jones felt utterly afraid, and would have turned to fly if he dared,

for an indescribable terror seized him and his knees shook; but some

power that made escape impossible held him remorselessly there, and

with eyes glued on the spots of light he crouched against the wall and

waited.

The figures began to move more swiftly, each in its own dim light

that shed no radiance beyond itself, and he heard a soft clanking of

chains and the voice of a man groaning in pain. Then came the sound of

a door closing, and thereafter Jones saw but one figure, the figure of

an old man, naked entirely, and fastened with chains to an iron

framework on the floor.