nd missus needn't have been jealous. Have never seen arsenic or
Prussian acid in any of the private drawers--but have seen paregoric
and camphor. One of my master's friends was a Count Moscow, a Russian
papist--which I detested.

CHAPTER II.

THE SLIM YOUNG MAN'S STORY.

I am by profession a reporter, and writer for the press. I live at
Pultneyville. I have always had a passion for the marvellous, and have
been distinguished for my facility in tracing out mysteries, and
solving enigmatical occurrences. On the night of the 17th June, 1845,
I left my office and walked homeward. The night was bright and
starlight. I was revolving in my mind the words of a singular item I
had just read in the "Times." I had reached the darkest portion of the
road, and found my self mechanically repeating: "An elderly gentleman a
week ago left his lodgings on the Kent Road," when suddenly I heard a
step behind me.

I turned quickly, with an expression of horror in my face, and by the
light of the newly risen moon beheld an elderly gentleman, with green
cotton umbrella, approaching me. His hair, which was snow white, was
parted over a broad, open forehead. The expression of his face, which
was slightly flushed, was that of amiability verging almost upon
imbecility. There was a strange, inquiring look about the widely
opened mild blue eye,--a look that might have been intensified to
insanity, or modified to idiocy. As he passed me, he paused and partly
turned his face, with a gesture of inquiry. I see him still, his white
locks blowing in the evening breeze, his hat a little on the back of
his head, and his figure painted in relief against the dark blue sky.

Suddenly he turned his mild eye full upon me. A weak smile played
about his thin lips. In a voice which had something of the
tremulousness of age and the self-satisfied chuckle of imbecility in
it, he asked, pointing to the rising moon, "Why?--hush!"

He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be looking anxiously down the
road. I could feel his aged frame shaking with terror as he laid his
thin hands upon my shoulders and faced me in the direction of the
supposed danger.

"Hush! did you not hear them coming?"

I listened; there was no sound but the soughing of the roadside trees
in the evening wind. I endeavored to reassure him, with such success
that in a few moments the old weak smile appeared on his benevolent
face.

"Why?--" But the look of interrogati