ther irregular.

'Who but the usurper?' cried all the Brethren together.

'And who is he?' said Yellow-cap.

Hereupon the Brethren one and all took their pipes out of their mouths
and deliberately pointed at Yellow-cap with their pipe-stems. At the
same time they puffed out a vast cloud of tobacco-smoke, which rose
to the ceiling of the room and collected there.

'Do you mean me?' cried Yellow-cap, recoiling. 'I never made a rhyme
in my life.'

'You have said it!' they answered with one voice; 'so let it be!'

At this moment they all arose and solemnly emptied their tankards;
then they piled the tankards together in the centre of the table; and
Dubsix and Atub, taking each an arm of Yellow-cap, raised him from the
floor and seated him upon the pile as upon a throne.

The six Brethren now joined hands and began to dance round and round
the table, puffing volumes of smoke from their pipes as they went.
Faster and wilder moved the dance, thicker and yellower whirled the
smoke-wreaths, and the six faces sped dizzily round the table, until
it seemed to Yellow-cap as if he were encircled by a great ring of
face, with one broad nose, one endless grinning mouth, and a single
leering eye in the forehead.

By and by the room began to spin round also--such, at least, was
Yellow-cap's impression. Round and round it spun like a teetotum,
moving as fast as the dancers did, but in the opposite direction. The
smoke, driven together by these contrary motions, was whirled into a
sort of hollow dome over Yellow-cap's head. The yellow light from the
lamp shone upon that smoky dome, and its shape became defined more and
more distinctly, until at last it hung poised in air--a gigantic image
of the very yellow cap which Yellow-cap wore.

Gradually it settled down lower and lower, as if to shut him in. He
tried to rise from his tankard throne, but a heavy weight from above
seemed to prevent him. And now, glaring upon him through the maze of
flying phantoms, he saw the mirror of the Brethren, no longer black
and lifeless, but fierce and flaming as the eye of a giant demon. And
through the centre of that fiery pupil he saw the Brethren, one after
another, take a flying leap; not vanishing suddenly, but dwindling
away, smaller and smaller, until they could be seen no more. Each as
he leaped threw back at Yellow-cap a malicious leer and beckoned to
him mockingly to follow. Gyp was the last; and as he sprang Yellow-cap
wrenched himself f