The speaker’s small, deep-set, black eyes, that never warmed to anything more human than a purely speculative scientific interest in his surroundings, here wandered round the skeptical yet expectant circle with bland amusement.  He stretched out his bloodless fingers for another of his host’s superfine cigars and proceeded, with only such interruptions as were occasioned by the lighting and careful smoking of the latter.

“I was returning home after my prolonged stay in Petersburg, intending to linger on my way and test with mine own ears certain among the many dialects of Eastern Europe—­anent which there is a symmetrical little cluster of philological knotty points it is my modest intention one day to unravel.  However, that is neither here nor there.  On the road to Hungary I bethought myself opportunely of proving the once pressingly offered hospitality of the Baron Kossowski.

“You may have met the man, Major Travers; he was a tremendous sportsman, if you like.  I first came across him at McNeil’s place in remote Ireland.  Now, being in Bukowina, within measurable distance of his Carpathian abode, and curious to see a Polish lord at home, I remembered his invitation.  It was already of long standing, but it had been warm, born in fact of a sudden fit of enthusiasm for me”—­here a half-mocking smile quivered an instant under the speaker’s black mustache—­“which, as it was characteristic, I may as well tell you about.

“It was on the day of, or, rather, to be accurate, on the day after my arrival, toward the small hours of the morning, in the smoking room at Rathdrum.  Our host was peacefully snoring over his empty pipe and his seventh glass of whisky, also empty.  The rest of the men had slunk off to bed.  The baron, who all unknown to himself had been a subject of most interesting observation to me the whole evening, being now practically alone with me, condescended to turn an eye, as wide awake as a fox’s, albeit slightly bloodshot, upon the contemptible white-faced person who had preferred spending the raw hours over his papers, within the radius of a glorious fire’s warmth, to creeping slyly over treacherous quagmires in the pursuit of timid bog creatures (snipe shooting had been the order of the day)-the baron, I say, became aware of my existence and entered into conversation with me.

“He would no doubt have been much surprised could he have known that he was already mapped out, craniologically and physiognomically, catalogued with care and neatly laid by in his proper ethnological box, in my private type museum; that, as I sat and examined him from my different coigns of vantage in library, in dining and smoking room that evening, not a look of his, not a gesture went forth but had significance for me.