The San Francisco call., 1896-03-08

appearing in California sky in the mid
die of summer.
In another instant, before any instinct
to fly could have found exercise, they were
overwhelmed in an awful biackness,
through which not the faintest ray of light
penetrated from any source whatever.
There are few persons IN this world who
know what absolute darkness is. 1t Is
difficult to find, except in the remotest
depths of the deepest caverns. There is
only one thing so terrifying as perfect
darkness, and that is absolute silence and
this is another exceedingly rare human
experience. Such backness as that in
which these two lads found themselves
seems palpable, ponderable, thick and OPP
pressive; it weighs upon the sensibilities
as a nightmare; it gives the impression of
drowning in sea of viscid ink. With its
sitting and its terrors it conduces to mad
ness.
Dazed and helpless at first with the hor-
ror of their situation, the boys clutched
each other to secure the consolation of
companionship in their fearful extremity,
and then, gasping and scrambling, began
to grope about in a search for the door.
By good fortune they presently found it
and tumbled headlong out upon the
ground, where they lay painting in the
brilliant sunshine that they had left when
they entered the house and that had
lured them abroad that summer morning.
Hand in hand, with no loss of time, they
scuIried away 10 a safe distance and paused
TO recover courage and breath.
They looked toward the house again
and saw another marvellous thing. In
their flight they had left the door wide
open, and they now beheld what appeared
to be an extraordinary structure stretch
ing from the door across the bed of the
canyon, the farther end resting on the
opposite hillside. Its sectional dimen-
sions at the house exactly fitted the door
way; in length it was seventy or eighty
yards, and it evenly increased in size
toward the hillside. Evidently an OPEN
ing for it had been cut through the forest.
ported neither by truss nor scaffold.
But the color was even more remarkable.
1t was dead black, without gloss, seam
or bolt, and the boys had never seen a
thing like it in their lives before. and cer-
tainlv it had not been there when they
approached the house. AS they watched
and wondered, well concealed in the brush,
looking at the strange object which
stretched across the canyon and listening
to the whirring and grinding OF the
machinery in the house, they saw an old
man OF singular appearance hurriedly and
-anxiously pushing his way through the
underground toward the building, paus ing
now and then in a listening attitude, his
face white with alarm and haggard with
anxiety.
1t was clear to them that his perturba-
ton had been caused by his discovery, as
he was approaching the house, that the
machinery had been started by strange
and vandal hands. He hurried forward,
paused IN passing transport of pleasure
to admire the strange black thing which
lay across the canyon, then cautiously ap-
preached the door and thrust his head 10
one side in peering within, though his at.
titude suggested listening instead of look
ing. In doing this he had to push his
head and one shoulder into the long black
object issuing from the door. There they
We're entirely lost to view. He had per-
formed this feat in spite of the apparent
solidIty of the object. But the most singu-
lar phenomenon was that as he thus stood
he appeared to be without head! 1t is
impossible to describe the sensation which
this spectacle produced in the minds OF the
silent watchers in the brush,
The old man then disappeared wholly in
the body of the black object at the plane
OF its juncture with the door, and a few
seconds afterward the grinding sound of
the machinery was stilled, and the great
black thing began to turn gray; it faded
quickly, became faint shadow and then
disappeared altogether.
The boys were yet too fascinated and
overcome to escape from this uncanny
place. While they waited in wondering
silence two other persons approached the
mysterious house. One was young
woman, handsome and sprightly, and the
other a young man, evidently her inferior