his. I saw the whole position at a glance. The truth of
the matter was that he did regret his generosity, and he was ready to go
any lengths if he could only succeed in cajoling me into restoring his
gift. He was aware that I have views upon certain matters which are not
wholly in accordance with those which are popularly supposed to be the
views of the day, and particularly that on the question of what are
commonly called supernatural visitations I have a standpoint of my own.
Therefore, it was not a bad move on his part to try to make me believe
that about the pipe on which he knew I had set my heart there was
something which could not be accounted for by ordinary laws. Yet, as his
own sense would have told him it would do, if he had only allowed himself
to reflect for a moment, the move failed. Because I am not yet so far gone
as to suppose that a pipe, a thing of meerschaum and of amber, in the
sense in which I understand the word, _could_ be haunted--a pipe, a mere
pipe.

"Hollo! I thought the creature's legs were twined right round the bowl!"

I was holding the pipe in my hand, regarding it with the affectionate eyes
with which a connoisseur does regard a curio, when I was induced to make
this exclamation. I was certainly under the impression that, when I first
took the pipe out of the box, two, if not three of the feelers had been
twined about the bowl--twined tightly, so that you could not see daylight
between them and it. Now they were almost entirely detached, only the tips
touching the meerschaum, and those particular feelers were gathered up as
though the creature were in the act of taking a spring. Of course I was
under a misapprehension: the feelers _couldn't_ have been twined; a moment
before I should have been ready to bet a thousand to one that they were.
Still, one does make mistakes, and very egregious mistakes, at times. At
the same time, I confess that when I saw that dreadful-looking animal
poised on the extreme edge of the bowl, for all the world as though it
were just going to spring at me, I was a little startled. I remembered
that when I was smoking the pipe I did think I saw the uplifted tentacle
moving, as though it were reaching out to me. And I had a clear
recollection that just as I had been sinking into that strange state of
unconsciousness, I had been under the impression that the creature was
writhing and twisting, as though it had suddenly become instinct with
life. Under the circumsta