the figure lying still and motionless in the center of the room.

"Vat you do dare," said he, with a guttural and foreign accent, and
thereupon, without waiting for a reply, came forward and knelt down
beside the dead man. After thrusting his hand into the silent and
shrunken bosom, he presently looked up and fixed his penetrating eyes
upon our hero's countenance, who, benumbed and bedazed with his
despair, still stood like one enchained in the bonds of a nightmare.
"He vas dead!" said the stranger, and Jonathan nodded his head in
reply.

"Vy you keel ze man?" inquired his interlocutor.

"Indeed," cried Jonathan, finding a voice at last, but one so hoarse
that he could hardly recognize it for his own, "I know not what to
make of the affair! But, indeed, I do assure thee, friend, that I am
entirely innocent of what thou seest."

The stranger still kept his piercing gaze fixed upon our hero's
countenance, and Jonathan, feeling that something further was demanded
of him, continued: "I am, indeed, a victim of a most extravagant and
extraordinary adventure. This evening, coming an entire stranger to
this country, I was introduced into the house of a beautiful female,
who bestowed upon me a charge that appeared to me to be at once
insignificant and absurd. Behold this little ivory ball," said he,
drawing the globe from his pocket, and displaying it between his thumb
and finger. "It is this that appears to have brought all this disaster
upon me; for, coming from the house of the young woman, the man whom
thou now beholdest lying dead upon the floor induced me to come to
this place. Having inveigled me hither, he demanded of me to give him
at once this insignificant trifle. Upon my refusing to do so, he
assaulted me with every appearance of a mad and furious inclination to
deprive me of my life!"

At the sight of the ivory ball the stranger quickly arose from his
kneeling posture and fixed upon our hero a gaze the most extraordinary
that he had ever encountered. His eyes dilated like those of a cat,
the breath expelled itself from his bosom in so deep and profound an
expiration that it appeared as though it might never return again. Nor
was it until Jonathan had replaced the ball in his pocket that he
appeared to awaken from the trance that the sight of the object had
sent him into. But no sooner had the cause of this strange demeanor
disappeared into our hero's breeches' pocket than he arose as with an
electric shock. I