"Yes, right, Walter Longcluse. I tell you how you will see it best: there is brilliant moonlight, stand there." Through a circular hole in the wall there streamed a beam of moonlight, that fell upon the plaster-wall opposite with the distinctness of the circle of a magic-lantern. "You see it--you know it! Ha! ha! His pretty face!" He held the mask up in the moonlight, and the lineaments, sinister enough, of Mr. Longcluse stood, sharply defined in every line and feature, in intense white and black, against the vacant shadow behind. There was the flat nose, the projecting underjaw, the oblique, sarcastic eyebrow, even the line of the slight but long scar, than ran nearly from his eye to his nostril. The same, but younger. "There is no doubt about _that_. But when was it taken? Will you read what is written upon it?" Uncle David had taken out the candle, and he held it beside the mask. The baron turned it round, and read, "Walter Longcluse, 15th October, 1844." "The same year in which Mace's was taken?" "So it is, 1844." "But there is a great deal more than you have read, written upon the parchment in this one." "It looks more." "And _is_ more. Why, count the words, one, two, four, six, eight. There must be thirty, or upwards." "Well, suppose there are, Sir: I have read, nevertheless, all I mean to read for the present. Suppose we bring these three masks together. We can talk a little then, and I will perhaps tell you more, and disclose to you some secrets of nature and art, of which perhaps you suspect nothing. Come, come, Monsieur! kindly take the candle." The baron shut the iron door with a clang, and locked it, and, taking up the box, marched into the next room, and placing the boxes one on top of the other, carried them in silence out upon the gallery, accompanied by David Arden. How desolate seemed the silence of the vast house, in all which, by this time, perhaps, there did not burn another light! They now re-entered the large and strangely-littered chamber in which he had talked with the baron; they stop among the chips and sawdust with which his work has strewn the floor. "Set the candle on this table," says he. "I'll light another for a time. See all the trouble and time you cost me!" He placed the two boxes on the table. "I am extremely sorry----" "Not on my account, you needn't. You'll pay me well for it." "So I will, Baron." "Sit you down on that, Monsieur." He placed a clumsy old chair, with a balloon-back, for his visitor, and, seating himself upon another, he struck his hand on the table, and said, arresting for a moment the restless movement of his eyes, and fixing on him a savage stare-- "You shall see wonders and hear marvels, if only you are willing to pay what they are worth." The baron laughed when he had said this. CHAPTER LXXX. ANOTHER.