ents in many cities. I lock dem up, and
do not carry mosh logish."

I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I first met him,
was bare, and had no bed in it.

"There is, then, a sleeping-room beyond?"

"This is the sleeping-room." (He pronounces it DIS. Can this, by the
way, give any clue to the nationality of this singular man?)

"If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety couch; if on
the floor, a dusty one."

"Suppose I sleep up dere?" said this strange man, and he actually
pointed up to the ceiling. I thought him mad, or what he himself called
"an ombog." "I know. You do not believe me; for why should I deceive
you? I came but to propose a matter of business to you. I told you I
could give you the clue to the mystery of the Two Children in Black,
whom you met at Baden, and you came to see me. If I told you you would
not believe, me. What for try and convinz you? Ha hey?" And he shook his
hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at me out of his eye in a
peculiar way.

Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate account. It
seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, whilst
behind his GLASS eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had
been lit in it. It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering
flames issued, sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced
me back into one of the chairs--the broken one--out of which I had much
difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamour was ended. It seemed,
to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the
man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if
he was lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me. When I came to myself
he was down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken
cane-bottomed chair, kindly enough--"Bah!" said he, "it is the smell of
my medicine. It often gives the vertigo. I thought you would have had
a little fit. Come into the open air." And we went down the steps,
and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was just shining on the
statue of Shepherd; the laundresses were traipsing about; the porters
were leaning against the railings; and the clerks were playing at
marbles, to my inexpressible consolation.

"You said you were going to dine at the 'Gray's-inn Coffee-house,'"
he said. I was. I often dine there. There is excellent wine at the
"Gray's-inn Coffee-house;" but I declare I NEVER SAID SO. I was not