when you make your morning draught a little too potent, it might
be as well for you to stay at home and sleep it off, before coming into
company."

"In the name of Heaven, young gentleman," said Mr. Cargill, "lay aside
this untimely and unseemly jesting! and tell me if you be not--as I
cannot but still believe you to be--that same youth, who, seven years
since, left in my deposit a solemn secret, which, if I should unfold to
the wrong person, woe would be my own heart, and evil the consequences
which might ensue!"

"You are very pressing with me, sir," said the Earl; "and, in exchange,
I will be equally frank with you.--I am not the man whom you mistake me
for, and you may go seek him where you will--It will be still more lucky
for you if you chance to find your own wits in the course of your
researches; for I must tell you plainly, I think they are gone somewhat
astray." So saying, with a gesture expressive of a determined purpose to
pass on, Mr. Cargill had no alternative but to make way, and suffer him
to proceed.

The worthy clergyman stood as if rooted to the ground, and, with his
usual habit of thinking aloud exclaimed to himself, "My fancy has played
me many a bewildering trick, but this is the most extraordinary of them
all!--What can this young man think of me? It must have been my
conversation with that unhappy young lady that has made such an
impression upon me as to deceive my very eyesight, and causes me to
connect with her history the face of the next person that I met--What
_must_ the stranger think of me!"

"Why, what every one thinks of thee that knows thee, prophet," said the
friendly voice of Touchwood, accompanying his speech with an awakening
slap on the clergyman's shoulder; "and that is, that thou art an
unfortunate philosopher of Laputa, who has lost his flapper in the
throng.--Come along--having me once more by your side, you need fear
nothing. Why, now I look at you closer, you look as if you had seen a
basilisk--not that there is any such thing, otherwise I must have seen
it myself, in the course of my travels--but you seem pale and
frightened--What the devil is the matter?"

"Nothing," answered the clergyman, "except that I have even this very
moment made an egregious fool of myself."

"Pooh, pooh, that is nothing to sigh over, prophet.--Every man does so
at least twice in the four-and-twenty hours," said Touchwood.

"But I had nearly betrayed to a stranger, a secret deeply concernin