It was a tall narrow building, wholly unornamented, the walls covered with a layer of white plaster cracked and soiled by time.

I seem to see that house now! Six stone steps led up to the door, with a rusty iron railing on each side, and under these steps were others which went down to a cellar--in my dream of course.' 'Of course--in your dream,' said Power, nodding comprehensively.
'Sitting lonely and apathetic without a light, at his own chamber-window at night time, our mechanician frequently observed dark figures descending these steps and ultimately discovered that the house was the meeting-place of a fraternity of political philosophers, whose object was the extermination of tyrants and despots, and the overthrow of established religions.

The discovery was startling enough, but our hero was not easily startled.

He kept their secret and lived on as before.

At last the mechanician and his affairs became known to the society, as the affairs of the society had become known to the mechanician, and, instead of shooting him as one who knew too much for their safety, they were struck with his faculty for silence, and thought they might be able to make use of him.' 'To be sure,' said Abner Power.
'Next, like friend Bunyan, I saw in my dream that denunciation was the breath of life to this society.