if this comes true, I'll quit
geology and go to working miracles to-morrow. I'll come over to your
faith, if I have to wade through my reason."

"Will you?" he responded, joyfully. "You will never repent it. There,
shake hands. I am not angry. Your unbelief is natural, though saddening.
To-morrow night, then, come and see me again and I will tell you the
whole adventure. I must be off to the train now. Excuse me for leaving
you. Would you like to sit here awhile and look at Humby's 'Modern
Miracles'?"

"No, thank you. Prefer to look at your miracles. I am going with you."

"Going with me? Are you? I'm delighted!" he cried, not in the least
startled or embarrassed by the proposition. "Now you shall see with your
own eyes."

"Yes, if it isn't too dark, I will,--word of a geologist. Well, shall we
start?"

"But won't you have a weapon? We go armed, of course, inasmuch as the
scoundrels may show fight when we come to arrest them."

"I don't want it," said I, gently pushing away a pocket-pistol, about as
dangerous as a squirt. "All the burglars you see to-night may shoot at
me, and welcome."

We walked to the station, and found our party waiting for the Boston
train. The Doctor introduced me, with much affectionate effusion and
many particulars concerning my family and early history, to the man of
unearthly lingoes. He was a tall, lean, flat-chested, cadaverous being,
of about forty, his sandy hair nicely sleeked, thin yellow whiskers
spattered on his hollow cheeks, his nose short and snub, his face
small, wilted, and so freckled that it could hardly be said to have
a complexion. In short, by its littleness, by its yellowness, by its
appearance of dusty dryness, this singular physiognomy reminded me so
strongly of a pinch of snuff, that I almost sneezed at sight of it. His
diminutive green eyes were fringed with ragged flaxen lashes, and seemed
to be very loose in their reddened lids, as if he could cry them out at
the shortest notice. I observed that he never looked his interlocutors
in the face, but stared chiefly at their feet, as if surmising whether
they would kick, or gazed into remote distance, as if trying to see
round the world and get a view of his own back. His dress was a full
suit of black, fine in texture, but bagging about him in a way that made
you wonder whether he had not lost a hundred-weight or so in training
for his spiritual battles. His manners were quiet, and would not have
been disagreeable,