took m’ umbrella ‘n’ thrashed ’m with it, remarking ’F’shame! waygup! mis’able boy! ‘s poorysight-f’r-’nuncle-t’ see-’s-nephew-’n-this-p’litical-c’ndit’n.’—­H’slep on; ‘n’ ’t last I picked up him, ‘n’ umbrella, ‘n’ took ‘m out t’ some cool place t’shleep’t off. Where’d’ I take him?  Thashwazmarrer—­where’d’ I leave’m?”

Repeating this question to himself, with an almost frenzied intensity, the gloomy victim of a treacherous memory threw an unearthly stare of bloodshot questioning all over the room, and, after a swaying motion or two of the upper half of his body, pitched forward, with his forehead crashing upon the table.  Instantly recovering himself, and starting to rub his head, he as suddenly checked that palliative process by a wild run to his feet and a hideous bellow.

“I r’memb’r, now!” he ejaculated, walking excitedly at a series of obtuse angles all over the apartment.

“Got-’t-knockedinto-m’-head-’t-last.  Pauper bur’l ground—­J.  M’GLAUGHLIN.  Down’n cellar—­cool placefa’ man’s tight—­lef’ m’ umbrella there by m’stake—­go’n’ get’t thishmin’t—­”

Managing, after several inaccurate aims at the doorway, to plunge into the adjacent bedroom, he presently reappeared from thence, veering hard-aport, with a lighted lantern in his right hand.  Then, circuitously approaching the neglected dining-table, he grasped with his disengaged digits at the antique black bottle, missed it, went all the way around the board before he could stop himself, clutched and missed again, went clear around once more, and finally effected the capture.  “Th ‘peared t’ be two,” he muttered, placing the prize in one of his pockets; and, with a triumphant stride, made for the half-open hall-door through which the eyes had been watching him.

The owner of those eyes, and of a surprising head of florid hair, had barely time to draw back into the shadow of the corridor and notice an approaching face like that of one walking in his sleep, when the clove-eater swung disjointedly by him, with jingling lantern, and went fiercely bumping down the stairway.  Closely, without sound, followed the watcher, and the two, like man and shadow, went out from the house into the quarry of the moon-eyed black leopard.

Fully bound now in the sinister spell of the spice of the Molucca islands, Mr. Bumstead had regained that condition of his duplex existence to which belonged the disposition he had made of his lethargic nephew and alpaca umbrella on that confused Christmas night; and with such realization of a distinct duality came back to him at least a partial recollection of where he had put the cherished two.  Finding Mr. E. Drood rather overcome by the more festive features of the meal,—­notwithstanding his walk at midnight with Mr. Pendragon,—­he had allowed his avuncular displeasure thereat to betray itself in a threshing administered with the umbrella.  Observing that the young man still slept beside the