My father settled himself obstinately in his chair.

“If that’s a gratis patient,” said he, between his teeth, “I’ll not stir.  From eight to ten are their hours, confound them!”

“If you please, sir,” said Mary, peeping in, “if you please, sir, it’s a gentleman.”

“A stranger?” asked my father.

Mary nodded, put her hand to her mouth, and burst into an irrepressible giggle.

“If you please, sir,” she began—­but could get no farther.

My father was in a towering passion directly.

“Is the girl mad?” he shouted.  “What is the meaning of this buffoonery?”

“Oh, sir—­if you please, sir,” ejaculated Mary, struggling with terror and laughter together, “it’s the gentleman, sir.  He—­he says, if you please, sir, that his name is Almond Pudding!”

“Your pardon, Mademoiselle,” said a plaintive voice.  “Armand Proudhine—­le Chevalier Armand Proudhine, at your service.”

Mary disappeared with her apron to her mouth, and subsided into distant peals of laughter, leaving the Chevalier standing in the doorway.

He was a very little man, with a pinched and melancholy countenance, and an eye as wistful as a dog’s.  His threadbare clothes, made in the fashion of a dozen years before, had been decently mended in many places.  A paste pin in a faded cravat, and a jaunty cane with a pinchbeck top, betrayed that he was still somewhat of a beau.  His scant gray hair was tied behind with a piece of black ribbon, and he carried his hat under his arm, after the fashion of Elliston and the Prince Regent, as one sees them in the colored prints of fifty years ago.

He advanced a step, bowed, and laid his card upon the table.

“I believe,” he said in his plaintive voice, and imperfect English, “that I have the honor to introduce myself to Monsieur Arbuthnot.”

“If you want me, sir,” said my father, gruffly, “I am Doctor Arbuthnot.”

“And I, Monsieur,” said the little Frenchman, laying his hand upon his heart, and bowing again—­“I am the Wizard of the Caucasus.”

“The what?” exclaimed my father.

“The Wizard of the Caucasus,” replied our visitor, impressively.

There was an awkward pause, during which my father looked at me and touched his forehead significantly with his forefinger; while the Chevalier, embarrassed between his natural timidity and his desire to appear of importance, glanced from one face to the other, and waited for a reply.  I hastened to disentangle the situation.

“I think I can explain this gentleman’s meaning,” I said.  “Monsieur le Chevalier will perform to-morrow evening in the large room of the Red Lion Hotel.  He is a professor of legerdemain.”

“Of the marvellous art of legerdemain, Monsieur Arbuthnot,” interrupted the Chevalier eagerly.  “Prestidigitateur to the Court of Sachsenhausen, and successor to Al Hakim, the wise.  It is I, Monsieur, that have invent the famous tour du pistolet; it is I, that have originate the great and surprising deception of the bottle; it is I whom the world does surname the Wizard of the Caucasus. Me voici!”