Chapter I: The Strange Visitor

On the evening of the 24th of December, 1874, the Senior Dean of St. Michael's, the Reverend HENRY BURROWES, was sitting in his comfortable rooms in the Great Court. He had, for reasons of his own, decided to spend the Christmas Vacation in Cambridge. His bed-maker, Mrs. JOGGINS, had entered a mild protest, but it been unavailing. Mr. BURROWES was a man of forbidding aspect and of unbending character. During the five years that he had held his office, he had enforced discipline at the point of the bayonet, as it were, and he boasted with pardonable pride that he had broken the spirit of the haughtiest and least tractable of the Undergraduates. Everybody had been gated at eight o'clock. Many had been sent down. Tears and denunciations were alike unavailing. The ruthless Dean had pursued his course without flinching. A very mild reading-man had attempted his life by dropping a Liddell and Scott on to his head from a first-floor room. This abandoned youth had been screened by his comrades, and had ultimately escaped in spite of the efforts of the justly incensed Dean.

It was nine o'clock. The bells at St. Mary's were ringing the customary curfew. The Dean was seated before the fire in his arm-chair. An open book, a treatise on some abstruse question of pure mathematics, lay on the table by his side. He was meditating on his past exploits, and planning new punishments. But somehow there was a strange sinking at his heart. What could be the reason of it? The dinner in hall had been of the usual moderate excellence, he had only drunk a bottle and a half of claret. "Pshaw," he said, "this is folly. I have not been severe enough. Conscience reproaches me. I am unmanned." He rose and paced about the room. At this moment his door opened, and the familiar figure of Mrs. JOGGINS appeared.

"Beg your pardon, Sir," she said, hesitatingly, "I thought you called."

"No, Mrs. JOGGINS," said the Dean. "I did not call. Are you not rather late in College? Is it usual for you to stay--" Here the Dean stopped abruptly. He rubbed his eyes, and clung to his book-shelf for support. His hair stood on end, and his knees shook. In fact he expressed terror in a thoroughly orthodox manner, for he had suddenly become aware that there was in the face of Mrs. JOGGINS a strange radiance, and that two gossamer wings had suddenly appeared on her back in place of the substantial shawl she was wont to wear. Mr. BURROWES gazed * * * then consciousness forsook him.