coming, the urchin became angry and furious beyond all
measure, prophesied that I should lose my eye about this time, and
vanisht with a great rumbling. Nor have I ever seen the brat again
since."

"Thou prince of all babbling braggarts!" cried Conrad, when the story
was ended: "Can't you open your mouth, man, without lying? and yet you
are already come to years. Folks that hold traffic for any time with
spirits, grow shar-pwitted. The dealings of these creatures are with
supernatural out-of-the-way things; and when they pay us a visit, the
very terrour they arouse, till one grows used to them a bit, gives one
something impressive and dignified."

"More especially," cried Michael somewhat angered, "when one has been
sleeping a night in a potato field."

"That night," answered Conrad, "and that abominable mischance, that
foul scandalous deed of a vagabond, will be the death of me; I know it
as well as you. I shall not hold out much longer."

"May be so," said the pale stranger; "yet you can't tell all this
while whether I too may not be one of these goblins, who has been
trying to cure you of your follies. To be good friends with you, my
rough-spoken, overbearing sir, it was verily requisite that you should
have treated me with a little more civility. Wisdom, experience,
strength of mind, may often be learnt from those in whom one is the
slowest to look for them. If however, my good companions, you would
like to know which of you all will die first, I have a way of telling
you that in a moment."

They all seated themselves in a circle on benches and stools. The
stranger pulled a plated box out of his pocket, while he continued:
"When this little chip which I am going to light is burning, you must
pass it quickly from hand to hand, and the person in whose hold it
goes out will be the first of us to see the next world."

All lookt at the stranger in anxious expectation. He thrust a little
bit of wood down into the box, while he muttered some sounds, and then
he drew it out again burning and flickering. Eleazar, who sat next to
him, received it, gave it to his neighbour, and thus the match went on
spitting sparks from one hand to another. It had finisht the round,
and come back to Eleazar, who was very loth to take it, and was
hastily passing it on, when on the sudden it flared brightly and then
went out between his fingers. "Stupid stuff!" he cried sulkily, as he
threw the bit of wood on the ground and jumpt up in a