MR. X. No, you cannot get a glimpse of your own back, man!—­In front you appear like a fearless sort of fellow, one meeting his fate with bared breast, but from behind—­really, I don’t want to be impolite, but—­you look as if you were carrying a burden, or as if you were crouching to escape a raised stick.  And when I look at that red cross your suspenders make on your white shirt—­well, it looks to me like some kind of emblem, like a trade-mark on a packing-box—­

MR. Y. I feel as if I’d choke—­if the storm doesn’t break soon—­

MR. X. It’s coming—­don’t you worry!—­And your neck!  It looks as if there ought to be another kind of face on top of it, a face quite different in type from yours.  And your ears come so close together behind that sometimes I wonder what race you belong to. [A flash of lightning lights up the room] Why, it looked as if that might have struck the sheriff’s house!

MR. Y. [Alarmed] The sheriff’s!

MR. X. Oh, it just looked that way.  But I don’t think we’ll get much of this storm.  Sit down now and let us have a talk, as you are going away to-morrow.  One thing I find strange is that you, with whom I have become so intimate in this short time—­that yon are one of those whose image I cannot call up when I am away from them.  When you are not here, and I happen to think of you, I always get the vision of another acquaintance—­one who does not resemble you, but with whom you have certain traits in common.

MR. Y. Who is he?

MR. X. I don’t want to name him, but—­I used for several years to take my meals at a certain place, and there, at the side-table where they kept the whiskey and the otter preliminaries, I met a little blond man, with blond, faded eyes.  He had a wonderful faculty for making his way through a crowd, without jostling anybody or being jostled himself.  And from his customary place down by the door he seemed perfectly able to reach whatever he wanted on a table that stood some six feet away from him.  He seemed always happy just to be in company.  But when he met anybody he knew, then the joy of it made him roar with laughter, and he would hug and pat the other fellow as if he hadn’t seen a human face for years.  When anybody stepped on his foot, he smiled as if eager to apologise for being in the way.  For two years I watched him and amused myself by guessing at his occupation and character.  But I never asked who he was; I didn’t want to know, you see, for then all the fun would have been spoiled at once.  That man had just your quality of being indefinite.  At different times I made him out to be a teacher who had never got his licence, a non-commissioned officer, a druggist, a government clerk, a detective—­ and like you, he looked as if made out of two pieces, for the front of him never quite fitted the back.  One day I happened to read in a newspaper about a big forgery committed by a well-known government official.  Then I learned that my indefinite gentleman had been