d--drink
my share of another bottle, I assure you, and not--feel the
slightest...."

"I have no doubt on that point," said my neighbor, gravely; "but our
French wines are deceptive, Mr. Arbuthnot, and you might possibly suffer
some inconvenience to-morrow. You, as a medical man, should understand
the evils of dyspepsia."

"Dy--dy--dyspepsia be hanged," I muttered, dreamily. "Tell me,
friend--by the by, I forget your name. Friend what?"

"Friend Pythias," returned the stranger, drily. "You gave me the name
yourself."

"Ay, but your real name?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"One name is as good as another," said he, lightly. "Let it be Pythias,
for the present. But you were about to ask me some question?"

"About old Cheron," I said, leaning both elbows on the table, and
speaking very confidentially. "Now tell me, have you--have you any
notion of what he is like? Do you--know--know anything about him?"

"I have heard of him," he replied, intent for the moment on the pattern
of his wine-glass.

"Clever?"

"That is a point upon which I could not venture an opinion. You must
ask some more competent judge."

"Come, now," said I, shaking my head, and trying to look knowing;
"you--you know what I mean, well enough. Is he a grim old fellow?
A--a--griffin, you know! Come, is he a gr--r--r--riffin?"

My words had by this time acquired a distressing, self-propelling
tendency, and linked themselves into compounds of twenty and thirty
syllables.

My _vis-a-vis_ smiled, bit his lip, then laughed a dry, short laugh.

"Really," he said, "I am not in a position to reply to your question;
but upon the whole, I should say that Dr. Cheron was not quite a
griffin. The species, you see, is extinct."

I roared with laughter; vowed I had never heard a better joke in my
life; and repeated his last words over and over, like a degraded idiot
as I was. All at once a sense of deadly faintness came upon me. I turned
hot and cold by turns, and lifting my hand to my head, said, or tried
to say:--

"Room's--'bominably--close!"

"We had better go," he replied promptly. "The air will do you good.
Leave me to settle for our dinners, and you shall make it right with me
by-and-by."

He did so, and we left the room. Once out in the open air I found myself
unable to stand. He called a _fiacre_; almost lifted me in; took his
place beside me, and asked the name of my hotel.

I had forgotten it; but I knew that it was opposite the railwa