f doubt and
astonishment.

"You are a very young man for the business," said she suspiciously.

"Oh, as for that, my dear, pray don't imagine that I am going to put up
with all the disagreeables of the profession for the fun of the thing. I
mean to have lots of help I can tell you. I shall live in town and
frequent the best taverns and coffee houses. I shall live like a
gentleman and nobody will know who I am. I shall only appear on the
scene officially when an execution worthy of my skill awaits me--a nice
beheading or something of that sort, you know. Oh! I shall have a fine
time of it I can tell you."

Dame Zudar felt a shudder run all down her back. She durst not look
again at the stranger.

"It is a pity you have not more than one 'prentice now. It looks as if
you had very much neglected the business. I am annoyed at that. It will
be difficult to give it a fresh start. Had you not more than one
apprentice a little time ago?"

"Yes, there used to be another," stammered Dame Zudar involuntarily.

"Then why did you pack him off?" inquired the unknown, picking from the
fire with his delicate index-finger a burning ember, tossing it lightly
on to his soft palm, and thence chucking it adroitly into the bowl of
his little pipe.

The woman and Ivan exchanged a look as if deliberating together what
answer they should give, and then the woman hastily replied:

"He went away of his own accord; the business is a pretty one, but he
got disgusted with it."

"Oh--ho! what a rum 'un the fellow must have been. And has he a better
time of it now?"

"I don't know," replied the virago defiantly. "It is not my business to
find out what has become of my discharged apprentices. He got sick of
this trade and took to another--that is the whole thing."

"You are quite right, my pretty dame, not everyone is fit for this
business. A man must have a natural liking for it. I, for instance,
would never take as an apprentice a man who had not spent some time in a
dungeon, or cooled his heels in jail two or three times running in five
or six years, for all the others are for ever wishing themselves back in
polite society, and want to live in town. And then, too, they are always
sighing and groaning and trying to make out that they are too good for
the business. I don't like such people myself. Those who are likely to
excel in this business show their teeth betimes. Those children who put
out the eyes of birds, nail bats to barn doors