without being in love. crucian experiment, I grip of the fraternity. Wishing to try a Rosiheld her hand in the Then, one midnight, when I was with my ancient friend, I silently wished that she should come to me at his house. Within five minutes the door bell rang, and she was shown into the room where we were sitting." "His accomplice," said Silvester. "How possible?" replied Nugent. "I have heard the story of Schiller's Ghost Seër. Read it, and see what you think of it. In this case you had unconsciously betrayed to your friend the Rosicrucian that you were going to try your experiment. In fact, he had laid a trap for you." "With what object? What could he gain by deluding me?" 66 'My dear fellow, when we begin by deluding ourselves, we like also to delude other people. So the man who torments himself will torment others; and the man who instructs himself will instruct others; and the man who amuses himself will amuse others." "You are philosophical and aphoristic," replied Nugent, stroking his beard and emitting a mighty puff of smoke that tried to rival the clouds of sunset. "But it seems to me that a man like that, who had nothing to gain by deluding a mere boy, as I was then, would not waste his time on such an employment." Silvester paused some time before he replied. Then he said: "Your experience of men (not to mention women) is far longer and wiser than mine. Yet I almost venture to think you have not observed the tendency which induces people perfectly sane and often very clever to do the maddest things. Your Amsterdam friend had persuaded himself there was something in the Rosicrucian mystery, and did his best to persuade others. Look at the Freemasons, a set of gentlemen who dine together, and are charitable to their poor companions, and who 1 have not the remotest idea of the craft and history of the freemasons who built our minsters, and whose name they have stolen. They positively persuade themselves and the world that they have a secret-and the secret is that there is no secret. People of this sort are interesting as psychological specimens, but I should not care to dine with them." "So you think my Rosicrucian was a humbug," said Walter Nugent, a trifle out of temper, and puffing furiously at his pipe. "He was an uncommonly clever humbug if he took you in," said Silvester quietly. "But I must be off now, old fellow. I've a lot of things to do before dinner. Good-bye. "Good-bye," said Nugent lazily, and strolled away toward Mount St. Nicholas. Silvester went up toward the house. It was nearly dinner-time, and there was just a chance, he had heard, of the parson and his niece coming to dinner. How it increaseth a young man's appetite when he expects a pretty girl to sit opposite or by his side! Which is the better? Meanwhile there passed through Silvester's mind doubts as to whether Walter Nugent was quite trustworthy. Silvester, truthful himself, accepted as truth what any one told him; but in Nugent's stories there was almost too strong a touch of romance. "I don't know what to make of that fellow," he soliloquized, strolling slowly homeward, with eyes that unconsciously drunk the sunset. "Does he lie deliberately and for mere fun, or does he delude himself into believing that his impossibilities have happened, or has he been utterly hoaxed by somebody? I shall ask my father to-night or to-morrow. 66 Not to-night though, by Aphrodite. Louisa is to be here. I mean to make love tremen dously. Little Louisa has but one fault; she thinks herself older than I am. She isn't: for I've lived at least half a century since I saw her." Love's logic. CHAPTER XV. A DISAPPOINTMENT. "Off! off!' said the stranger; ILVESTER was doomed to disappoint SIL ment that evening. The parson came to dinner without Louisa. He explained, rather incoherently, that she had-probably-probably—some duty which prevented her coming. Silvia smiled mischievously to see her brother's countenance elongate. But they all went to dinner, and a capital dinner they had. You don't get moor mutton with hot laver sauce every day. The author is inhibited by publishers and |