Something in the night constrained the cloaked man to silence, and for
a long hour he led me forward without needless words; making only the
briefest of comments concerning ancient names and dates and changes,
and directing my progress very largely by gestures as we squeezed
through interstices, tiptoed through corridors, clambered over brick
walls, and once crawled on hands and knees through a low, arched
passage of stone whose immense length and tortuous twistings effaced
at last every hint of geographical location I had managed to preserve. The things we saw were very old and marvelous, or at least they seemed
so in the few straggling rays of light by which I viewed them, and I
shall never forget the tottering Ionic columns and fluted pilasters
and urn-headed iron fenceposts and flaring-linteled windows and
decorative fanlights that appeared to grow quainter and stranger the
deeper we advanced into this inexhaustible maze of unknown antiquity. *       *       *       *       *

We met no person, and as time passed the lighted windows became fewer
and fewer. The streetlights we first encountered had been of oil, and
of the ancient lozenge pattern. Later I noticed some with candles; and
at last, after traversing a horrible unlighted court where my guide
had to lead me with his gloved hand through total blackness to a
narrow wooden gate in a high wall, we came upon a fragment of alley
lit only by lanterns in front of every seventh house--unbelievably
Colonial tin lanterns with conical tops and holes punched in the
sides. This alley led steeply uphill--more steeply than I had thought
possible in this part of New York--and the upper end was blocked
squarely by the ivy-clad wall of a private estate, beyond which I
could see a pale cupola, and the tops of trees waving against a vague
lightness in the sky. In this wall was a small, low-arched gate of
nail-studded black oak, which the man proceeded to unlock with a
ponderous key. Leading me within, he steered a course in utter
blackness over what seemed to be a gravel path, and finally up a
flight of stone steps to the door of the house, which he unlocked and
opened for me. We entered, and as we did so I grew faint from a reek of infinite
mustiness which welled out to meet us, and which must have been the
fruit of unwholesome centuries of decay. My host appeared not to
notice this, and in courtesy I kept silent as he piloted me up a
curving stairway, across a hall, and into a room whose door I heard
him lock behind us. Then I saw him pull the curtains of the three
small-paned windows that barely showed themselves against the
lightening sky; after which he crossed to the mantel, struck flint and
steel, lighted two candles of a candelabrum of twelve sconces, and
made a gesture enjoining soft-toned speech. In this feeble radiance I saw that we were in a spacious,
well-furnished and paneled library dating from the first quarter of
the Eighteenth Century, with splendid doorway pediments, a delightful
Doric cornice, and a magnificently carved overmantel with
scroll-and-urn top. Above the crowded bookshelves at intervals along
the walls were well-wrought family portraits; all tarnished to an
enigmatical dimness, and bearing an unmistakable likeness to the man
who now motioned me to a chair beside the graceful Chippendale table. Before seating himself across the table from me, my host paused for a
moment as if in embarrassment; then, tardily removing his gloves,
wide-brimmed hat, and cloak, stood theatrically revealed in full
mid-Georgian costume from queued hair and neck ruffles to
knee-breeches, silk hose, and the buckled shoes I had not previously
noticed. Now slowly sinking into a lyre-back chair, he commenced to
eye me intently. Without his hat he took on an aspect of extreme age which was scarcely
visible before, and I wondered if this unperceived mark of singular
longevity were not one of the sources of my original disquiet. When he
spoke at length, his soft, hollow, and carefully muffled voice not
infrequently quavered; and now and then I had great difficulty in
following him as I listened with a thrill of amazement and
half-disavowed alarm which grew each instant. “You behold, Sir,” my host began, “a man of very eccentrical habits,
for whose costume no apology need be offered to one with your wit and
inclinations. Reflecting upon better times, I have not scrupled to
ascertain their ways and adopt their dress and manners; an indulgence
which offends none if practised without ostentation. It hath been my
good fortune to retain the rural seat of my ancestors, swallowed
though it was by two towns, first Greenwich, which built up hither
after 1800, then New York, which joined on near 1830. There were many
reasons for the close keeping of this place in my family, and I have
not been remiss in discharging such obligations. The squire who
succeeded to it in 1768 studied sartain arts and made sartain
discoveries, all connected with influences residing in this particular
plot of ground, and eminently desarving of the strongest guarding. Some curious effects of these arts and discoveries I now purpose to
show you, under the strictest secrecy; and I believe I may rely on my
judgment of men enough to have no distrust of either your interest or
your fidelity.”

He paused, but I could only nod my head. I have said that I was
alarmed, yet to my soul nothing was more deadly than the material
daylight world of New York, and whether this man were a harmless
eccentric or a wielder of dangerous arts I had no choice save to
follow him and slake my sense of wonder on whatever he might have to
offer. So I listened. “To--my ancestor,” he softly continued, "there appeared to reside some
very remarkable qualities in the will of mankind; qualities having a
little-suspected dominance not only over the acts of one’s self and of
others, but over every variety of force and substance in Nature, and
over many elements and dimensions deemed more universal than Nature
herself. May I say that he flouted the sanctity of things as great as
space and time and that he put to strange uses the rites of sartain
half-breed red Indians once encamped upon this hill? These Indians
showed choler when the place was built, and were plaguey pestilent in
asking to visit the grounds at the full of the moon. For years they
stole over the wall each month when they could, and by stealth
performed sartain acts. Then, in ’68, the new squire catched them at
their doings, and stood still at what he saw. Thereafter he bargained
with them and exchanged the free access of his grounds for the exact
inwardness of what they did; larning that their grandfathers got part
of their custom from red ancestors and part from an old Dutchman in
the time of the States-General. And pox on him, I’m afeared the squire
must have sarved them monstrous bad rum--whether or not by intent--for
a week after he larnt the secret he was the only man living that knew
it.