business (which was a mystery) or hint at his departure. I myself
often visited the room he had appropriated, and would sit for an hour
watching those fathomless eyes while I tried to make head or tail of
his discourse. When we were alone, my wife and I used to speculate
at times on his probable profession. Was he a merchant?--an aged
mariner?--a tinker, tailor, beggarman, thief? We could never decide,
and he never disclosed.

Then the awakening came. I sat one day in the chair beside his,
wondering as usual. I had felt heavy of late, with a soreness and
languor in my bones, as if a dead weight hung continually on my
shoulders, and another rested on my heart. A warmer colour in the
Stranger's cheek caught my attention; and I bent forward, peering
under the pendulous lids. His eyes were livelier and less profound.
The melancholy was passing from them as breath fades off a pane of
glass. _He was growing younger_. Starting up, I ran across the
room, to the mirror.

There were two white hairs in my fore-lock; and, at the corner of
either eye, half a dozen radiating lines. I was an old man.

Turning, I regarded the Stranger. He sat phlegmatic as an Indian
idol; and in my fancy I felt the young blood draining from my own
heart, and saw it mantling in his cheeks. Minute by minute I watched
the slow miracle--the old man beautified. As buds unfold, he put on
a lovely youthfulness; and, drop by drop, left me winter.

I hurried from the room, and seeking my wife, laid the case before
her. "This is a ghoul," I said, "that we harbour: he is sucking my
best blood, and the household is clean bewitched." She laid aside
the book in which she read, and laughed at me. Now my wife was
well-looking, and her eyes were the light of my soul. Consider,
then, how I felt as she laughed, taking the Stranger's part against
me. When I left her, it was with a new suspicion in my heart.
"How shall it be," I thought, "if after stealing my youth, he go on
to take the one thing that is better?"

In my room, day by day, I brooded upon this--hating my own
alteration, and fearing worse. With the Stranger there was no longer
any disguise. His head blossomed in curls; white teeth filled the
hollows of his mouth; the pits in his cheeks were heaped full with
roses, glowing under a transparent skin. It was Aeson renewed and
thankless; and he sat on, devouring my substance.

Now having probed my weakness, and being satisfied that I n