As she spoke, they reached the door of the strange building. They could see that it stood open, and even as they paused near the threshold another puff of air passed them, and they heard a door squeak on its rusty hinges.
They stood and listened breathlessly, peering into the dark interior whence there was borne to their nostrils a musty odor. A large bat whisked across the opening, and as they started back alarmed he returned with swift zig-zag cuts and vanished ghostlike into the house.
"Well, we needn't go in, I guess," said Rebecca, turning from the door and starting briskly away. "Come on this way, Phoebe--look out fer the trees--lands! Did y'ever see so many?"
A few steps brought them to a high brick wall, against which flowers, weeds, and vines grew rank together. They followed this wall, walking more rapidly, for the day was breaking in earnest and groping was needless now. Presently they came to a spot where the wall was broken away, leaving an opening just broad enough to admit a man's body. Rebecca squeezed boldly through and Phoebe followed her, rather for company's sake than with any curiosity to see what was beyond.
They found themselves in a sort of open common, stretching to the edge of a broad roadway about a hundred yards from where they stood. On the other side of the road a cluster of gabled cottages was visible against the faint rose tint of the eastern sky.
As Phoebe came to her sister's side, she clutched her arm excitedly:
"Rebecca!" she exclaimed. "'Tis Newington, as true as I live! Newington and Blackman Street!"
Suddenly she sat down in the grass and hid her face in her hands.
"What d'ye mean?" said Rebecca, looking down at her sister with a puzzled expression. "Where's Newington--I never heerd tell of Blackman Street. Air ye thinkin' of Boston, or----"
Phoebe interrupted her by leaping to her feet and starting back to the opening in the wall.
"Come back, Rebecca!" she exclaimed. "Come back quick!"
Rebecca followed her sister in some alarm. Phoebe must have been taken suddenly ill, she thought. Perhaps they had reached one of those regions infected by fevers of which she had heard from time to time.
In silence the two women hurried back to the Panchronicon, whose uncouth form was now quite plainly visible behind the trees into the midst of which it had fallen when the power stored within it was exhausted.