“Neither,” said the mariner. “Here.”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, starting.

“When I say here,” said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel’s intense relief, “I don’t of course mean here in this place, I mean hereabouts.”

“An Invisible Man!” said Mr. Marvel.  “And what’s he been up to?”

“Everything,” said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying, “every—­blessed—­thing.”

“I ain’t seen a paper these four days,” said Marvel.

“Iping’s the place he started at,” said the mariner.

“In-deed!” said Mr. Marvel.

“He started there.  And where he came from, nobody don’t seem to know.  Here it is:  ‘Pe-culiar Story from Iping.’  And it says in this paper that the evidence is extra-ordinary strong—­extra-ordinary.”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel.

“But then, it’s an extra-ordinary story.  There is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses—­saw ’im all right and proper—­or leastways didn’t see ’im.  He was staying, it says, at the ‘Coach an’ Horses,’ and no one don’t seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says, aware of his misfortune, until in an Altercation in the inn, it says, his bandages on his head was torn off.  It was then ob-served that his head was invisible.  Attempts were At Once made to secure him, but casting off his garments, it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not until after a desperate struggle, in which he had inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able constable, Mr. J. A. Jaffers.  Pretty straight story, eh?  Names and everything.”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and full of a strange and novel idea.  “It sounds most astonishing.”

“Don’t it?  Extra-ordinary, I call it.  Never heard tell of Invisible Men before, I haven’t, but nowadays one hears such a lot of extra-ordinary things—­that—­”

“That all he did?” asked Marvel, trying to seem at his ease.

“It’s enough, ain’t it?” said the mariner.

“Didn’t go Back by any chance?” asked Marvel.  “Just escaped and that’s all, eh?”

“All!” said the mariner.  “Why!—­ain’t it enough?”

“Quite enough,” said Marvel.

“I should think it was enough,” said the mariner.  “I should think it was enough.”

“He didn’t have any pals—­it don’t say he had any pals, does it?” asked Mr. Marvel, anxious.

“Ain’t one of a sort enough for you?” asked the mariner.  “No, thank Heaven, as one might say, he didn’t.”

He nodded his head slowly.  “It makes me regular uncomfortable, the bare thought of that chap running about the country!  He is at present At Large, and from certain evidence it is supposed that he has—­taken—­took, I suppose they mean—­the road to Port Stowe.  You see we’re right in it!  None of your American wonders, this time.  And just