anxiety. I sat struck
still with wonder; the man seemed mad. He looked at me now, and his
glance was full of deepest suspicion. He opened his mouth to speak, but
words seemed to fail him; he held out the leathern case towards me.
Strange as was the question that his gesture put I could not doubt it.

"I haven't touched the book," said I. "Indeed, sir, only your visible
agitation can gain you pardon for the suggestion."

"Then how--how?" he muttered.

"You pass my understanding, sir," said I in petulant amusement. "I say
in jest 'I come, thou comest, he comes,' and the words act on you like
abracadabra and the blackest of magic. You don't, I presume, carry a
hornbook of French in your case; and if you do, I haven't robbed you of
it."

He was turning the little case over and over in his hands, again
examining the clasps of it. His next freak was to snatch his pistol and
look to the priming. I burst out laughing, for his antics seemed absurd.
My laughter cooled him, and he made a great effort to regain his
composure. But I began to rally him.

"Mayn't a man know how to say in French 'He comes' without stealing the
knowledge from your book, sir?" I asked. "You do us wrong if you think
that so much is known to nobody in England."

He glared at me like a man who hears a jest, but cannot tell whether it
conceals earnest or not.

"Open the case, sir," I continued in raillery. "Make sure all is there.
Come, you owe me that much."

To my amazement he obeyed me. He opened the case and searched through
certain papers which it contained; at the end he sighed as though in
relief, yet his suspicious air did not leave him.

"Now perhaps, sir," said I, squaring my elbows, "you'll explain the
comedy."

That he could not do. The very impossibility of any explanation showed
that I had, in the most unexpected fashion, stumbled on some secret with
him even as I had before with Darrell. Was his secret Darrell's or his
own, the same or another? What it was I could not tell, but for certain
there it was. He had no resource but to carry the matter with a high
hand, and to this he betook himself with the readiness of his nation.

"You ask an explanation, sir?" he cried. "There's nothing to explain,
and if there were, I give explanations when I please, and not to every
fellow who chooses to ask them of me."

"I come, thou comest, he comes,--'tis a very mysterious phrase," said I.
"I can't tell what it means. And if you won't tell me