They moved swiftly, and things happened.  He found himself suddenly in a long gallery, half in the dusk, half in the lamplight, pacing slowly back and forth, waiting for something, he knew not what.  To him came a bustling motherly old woman with a maid’s cap on, who said, “Sure, Master Ben, the moon is shining, and, let me tell ye, at the end of the hall is a balcony of iron, and Miss Mary will be glad you know that same.”  And at that he seemed to himself to be hunting for a coin with which to tip her.  He discovered it turned to lead between his fingers, whereupon the old woman laughed shrilly and disappeared, and he found himself alone on the prairie at midnight.

His mind seemed to be filled with great thoughts which would make him famous.  Over and over again he said to himself:  “The rain pours and the people down below chuckle as they move about each under his little umbrella of self-conceit.  They look up to the mountain, saying, ’The fool!  Why looks he so high?  He is lost in the mists up there, and he might be safe and dry with us.’  But the mountain has over him the arch of the universe, and sleeps calmly in the sun of truth.  Little recks he of the clouds below, and knows not at all the little self-satisfied fools who pity him,” and he thought this was the sum of all wisdom, and that with it would come immortality.

Then a bell began to boom, a deep-toned bell, whose tolling was inexpressibly solemn, and poured into his heart a sadness too deep for sorrow.  As though there dwelt an enchantment in the very sound itself, the dark prairies shifted like a scene, and in their stead he saw, in a cold gray twilight, a high doorway built of a cold gray stone, rough-hewed and heavy.  Through its arch passed then a file of gray-cowled monks, their faces concealed.  Each carried a torch, whose flickering, wavering light cast weird cowled figures on the gray stone, and in their midst was borne a bier, covered with white.  And as the deep bell boomed on through all the vision, like a subtle thrilling presence, Bennington seemed to himself to stand, finger on lip, the eternal custodian of the Secret of it all—­the secret that each of these cowled figures was a Man—­a divine soul and a body, with ears, and eyes, and a brain; that he had thoughts, and his life that is and is to come was of these thoughts; that there beat hearts beneath that gray, and that their voices must not be heeded; that in the morning these wearied eyes awaited but the eve, and that the evening brought no hope for a new day; that these silent, awesome beings lived within the heavy stones alone with monotony, until the bell tolled, as now, and they were carried through the arched doorway into the night; and, above all, that to each there were sixty minutes in the hour, and twenty-four hours in the day, and years and years of these days.  This was the Secret, and he was its custodian.  None of the others knew of it; but its awfulness made him sad and stern.  He