out," the goldsmith said, very quietly, and
with a strange smile. "Be very careful what you're about; you've got
strange sort of people to do with here."

And as he so spake, lo! instead of the goldsmith's face, there was a
horrid-looking fox's face snarling and showing its teeth at Tussmann
from under the goldsmith's bonnet.

The Clerk of the Privy Chancery fell back in his chair in the
profoundest terror.

The old Jew did not seem to be in the least degree surprised by this
transformation; rather, he had suddenly lost his mood of ill-temper
altogether. He laughed, and cried, "Aha! capital sport! But there's
nothing to be _made_ by those arts. I know better ones. I can do things
which were always beyond _you_, Leonhard."

"Let us see," said the goldsmith, who had assumed his human countenance
again--"let us see what you can do."

The old man took from his pocket a large black radish, trimmed it and
scraped it with a little knife, which also came from his pocket,
shredded it into thin strips, and laid them in order on the table. Then
he struck each of them a blow with his clenched fist; when they sprung
up, one by one, ringing, in the shape of gold coins, which he took up
and threw across to the goldsmith. But as soon as the goldsmith took
hold of one of those coins, it fell to dust, in a little shower of
crackling sparks of fire. This infuriated the old man. He went on
striking the radish-shavings into gold pieces faster and faster,
hitting them harder and harder, and they crackled away in the
goldsmith's hand with fierier and fierier sparks.

Tussmann was nearly out of his senses with fear and agitation. At last
he pulled himself together out of the swoon into which he was nearly
falling, and said, in trembling accents: "Really, I must beg, with all
due courtesy and respect, to say that I feel that I should much prefer
to bid 'Good-evening' on this occasion." And grasping his hat and
stick, he bolted out of the room as quickly as he could. When he
reached the street, he heard those two uncanny people setting up a
shout of screaming laughter after him, which made the blood run cold in
his veins.

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH IT IS RELATED HOW, BY THE INTERVENTION OF A CIGAR WHICH WOULD
NOT DRAW, A LOVE-AFFAIR WAS SET AGOING BETWEEN A LADY AND
GENTLEMAN WHO HAD PREVIOUSLY KNOCKED THEIR HEADS TOGETHER.

The manner in which young Edmund Lehsen, the painter, made acquaintance