ten here for a moment, and an expression of real sympathy was
perceivable in his low, husky voice. "Command me in any way dat accords
wid my duty," he continued, "yes! de boy shall come! To interest, to
amuse you, is perhaps--to cure!"

"Thank you; I shall await his advent anxiously; be careful not to
disappoint me."

"Oh, not for vorlds!"

"You are very kind; I believe, though, that is all we have to say to one
another, Dr. Englehart."

"You are bettair, then?" he said, advancing steadily toward me in spite
of this dismissal. "You need no more leetle pill? Are you quite sure of
dat?"

"Not now, at least, Dr. Englehart."

"Permit me, then, to feel your pulse vonce more. I shall determine den
more perfectly dis vexing subject of your sanity."

"Thank you; I decline your opinion on a matter so little open to
difference. Be good enough to retire. Dr. Englehart. Let me at least
breathe freely in the solitude to which I am consigned."

"I mean no offence, yonge lady," he said, meekly, falling back to the
centre-table on which was burning my shaded astral lamp--for I had left
it as he approached, instinctively to seek the protection of an
interposing chair, on the back of which I stood leaning as I spoke.

He, too, remained standing, with one hand pressed firmly backward on the
top of the table, in front of which he poised himself, gesticulating
earnestly yet respectfully.

His position was an error of mistaken confidence in his own make-up,
such as we see occur every day among those even long habituated to
disguise.

As he stood I distinctly saw a line of light traced between his cheek
and one of his bushy side-whiskers.

That line of light let in a flood of evidence. The man was an impostor,
a tool, as criminal as his employer--not the footprint on the sand was
more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than that luminous streak to me, nor
the cause of wilder conjecture.

Yet I betrayed nothing of my amazement I am convinced, for, after
standing silently for a time and almost in a suppliant attitude before
me, Dr. Englehart departed, and for many days I saw him not again.

An object that looked not unlike a small, solemn owl, stood in the
middle of the floor, regarding me silently when I awoke very early on
the following morning.

At a glance I recognized poor little Ernie, and singularly enough, he
knew and remembered me at once.

"Ernie good boy now," he said as he came toward me with his tiny claw
extended.