That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon’s expounding had failed to make me a convert; but now it seemed as if a great light shone about me, like that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus; and out there in the storm and darkness and solitude I experienced what Lewes calls “The endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought.”  I exulted in a new sense of knowledge, a new pride of reason.  My feet seemed hardly to touch the earth; it was as if I were uplifted and borne through the air by invisible wings.

Yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him whom I now recognized as my master and guide, I had unconsciously turned about, and almost before I was aware of having done so found myself again at Moxon’s door.  I was drenched with rain, but felt no discomfort.  Unable in my excitement to find the doorbell I instinctively tried the knob.  It turned and, entering, I mounted the stairs to the room that I had so recently left.  All was dark and silent; Moxon, as I had supposed, was in the adjoining room—­the “machine-shop.”  Groping along the wall until I found the communicating door I knocked loudly several times, but got no response, which I attributed to the uproar outside, for the wind was blowing a gale and dashing the rain against the thin walls in sheets.  The drumming upon the shingle roof spanning the unceiled room was loud and incessant.

I had never been invited into the machine-shop—­had, indeed, been denied admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled metal worker, of whom no one knew anything except that his name was Haley and his habit silence.  But in my spiritual exaltation, discretion and civility were alike forgotten and I opened the door.  What I saw took all philosophical speculation out of me in short order.

Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table upon which a single candle made all the light that was in the room.  Opposite him, his back toward me, sat another person.  On the table between the two was a chessboard; the men were playing.  I knew little of chess, but as only a few pieces were on the board it was obvious that the game was near its close.  Moxon was intensely interested—­not so much, it seemed to me, in the game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had fixed so intent a look that, standing though I did directly in the line of his vision, I was altogether unobserved.  His face was ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like diamonds.  Of his antagonist I had only a back view, but that was sufficient; I should not have cared to see his face.

He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions suggesting those of a gorilla—­a tremendous breadth of shoulders, thick, short neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth of black hair and was topped with a crimson fez.  A tunic of the same color, belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat—­apparently a box—­upon which he sat; his legs and feet were not seen.  His left forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with his right hand, which seemed disproportionately long.