the apartment; and I thought I saw—­but of this I cannot take an affirmation—­a light green and violet flame flickering round the neck of the phial as he opened it.  By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg.  Over the dust which lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made by the wooden stump.  I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and felt a secret comfort that it was not cloven.

     * This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you might put a breakfast-tray, and not a single other article of furniture.  In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent gilt dressing-case, with some splendid diamond and ruby shirt-studs lying by it, and a chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of clothes.

Remembering him in Baden-Baden in great magnificence, I wondered at his present denuded state.  “You have a house elsewhere, Mr. Pinto?” I said.

“Many,” says he.  “I have apartments in many cities.  I lock dem up, and do not carry mosh logish.”

I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I first met him, was bare, and had no bed in it.

“There is, then, a sleeping-room beyond?”

“This is the sleeping-room.” (He pronounces it dis.  Can this, by the way, give any clue to the nationality of this singular man?)

“If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety couch; if on the floor, a dusty one.”

“Suppose I sleep up dere?” said this strange man, and he actually pointed up to the ceiling.  I thought him mad, or what he himself called “an ombog.”  “I know.  You do not believe me; for why should I deceive you?  I came but to propose a matter of business to you.  I told you I could give you the clue to the mystery of the Two Children in Black, whom you met at Baden, and you came to see me.  If I told you you would not believe, me.  What for try and convinz you?  Ha hey?” And he shook his hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at me out of his eye in a peculiar way.

Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate account.  It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, whilst behind his glass eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had been lit in it.  It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced me back into one of the chairs—­the broken one—­out of which I had much difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamour was ended.  It seemed, to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the