as completely as though the earth had opened up and swallowed him.
“Has the rascal spread his cloak and flown over the wall, or has he changed his bodily substance and passed right through it, like the prince in the fairy tale?” demanded Gysbert of the air about him. But as it was plain this would bring no solution of the enigma, he cautiously crept toward the wall, determined by some means to solve the mystery.
From the turn of the canal to the wall was a distance of perhaps five hundred yards, an unoccupied space of ground like a meadow, broken by nothing save a little brook that connected with the canal. At the base of the wall this brook spread out for a space, like a miniature lake. Gysbert examined every inch of the ground attentively, without finding anything that might serve to enlighten him. At the face of the wall he stopped. Plainly no human being could scale at this point the high, smooth surface that con-
