On arriving at the wall whereof the ferryman had told him, he found it a truly formidable affair, some twelve feet high and built of brick.  To scale it without a ladder was impossible; but Balder, never doubting that there was a gate somewhere, set out in search of it.

It was tiresome walking over the uneven ground and through obstructing bushes, branches, and stumps.  The tall brick barrier seemed as interminable as unbroken.  How many houses, thought Balder, might have been built from the material thus wasted!  If ever he came into possession of the place, he resolved to present the brick to his friend Charon, that he might replace his wooden shanty with something more durable and convenient, and perhaps build a dock for the schooner “Resurrection” to lie in.  It must have taken a fortune to put up such a wall; were the enclosure proportionally valuable, it was worth while crossing the ocean to see it.  Still more wall! fully a mile of it already, and yet further it rambled on through leafy thickets.  But no signs of a gate!

“I believe the Devil really does live here!” exclaimed Balder, in impatient heat; “and the only way in or out is on a broomstick,—­or by diving under ground, as Charon said!”

Stumbling onwards awhile farther, he suddenly came again upon the river-bank, having skirted the whole length of the wall.  There was actually no getting in!  The castle was impregnable.

Helwyse sat down at the foot of a birch-tree which grew a few yards from the wall.

“How does my uncle manage about his butcher and baker, I wonder!  He might at least have provided a derrick for victualling his stronghold.  Perhaps he hauls up provisions by ropes over the face of the cliff.  No doubt, Charon knew about it.  Shall I go down and look?”

It was provoking—­having come so far to call on a relative—­to be put off with a mile or two of brick wall.  The gate must have been walled up since his father’s time, for Thor had never mentioned any deficiency in that respect.  But Balder’s determination was piqued,—­not to mention his curiosity.  Had the path from Mr. MacGentle’s office to Doctor Glyphic’s door been straight and unobstructed, the young man might have wandered aside and never reached the end.  As it was, he was goaded into the resolution to see his uncle at all hazards.  An additional spur was the thought of the gracious apparition which he had seen—­or dreamt he saw—­from the farther bank.  Was she indeed but an apparition?—­or the single reality amidst the throng of fantasies evoked by his overwrought mind?—­beaconing him through misty errors to a fate better than he knew!  In all seriousness, who could she be?  Had Doctor Glyphic crowned his eccentricities by marrying, and begetting a daughter?

These speculations were interrupted by the clear, joyous note of a bird, just above Balder’s head.  It was such a note as might have been uttered by a paradisical cuckoo with the breath of a brighter world in his throat.  Looking up, he saw a beautiful little fowl perched on the topmost twig of the birch-tree.  It had a slender bill, and on its head a crest of splendid feathers, which it set up at Balder in a most coquettish manner.  The next moment it flew over the wall, and from the farther side warbled an invitation to follow.