"Really, 'Arry," I replied, "you wrong me--and, by-the-way, excuse me for calling you 'Arry. It is the most appropriate name I can think of at the moment." "Call me what you blooming please," he answered. "But remember you can't soft-soap me into believing you like me. B-r-r-r-r!" he added, shivering. "It's beastly cold in here. What you been doing--storing ice?" "Well--there's a fire burning over there in the fireplace," said I, anxious to get him before the open chimney-place; for, by a natural law, that was directly in the line of the current. He looked at me suspiciously, and then at the fireplace with equal mistrust; then he shrugged his shoulders with a mocking laugh that jarred. "Humph!" he said. "What's your scheme? Got some patent explosive logs, full of chemicals, to destroy me?" I laughed. "How suspicious you are!" I said. "Yes--I always am of suspicious characters," he replied, planting himself immediately in front of the register, desirous no doubt of acting directly contrary to my suggestion. My opportunity had come more easily than I expected. "There isn't any heat here," said he. "It's turned off. I'll turn it on for you," said I, scarcely able to contain myself with excitement--and I did. Well, as I say, the spectacle was pleasing, but it did not work as I had intended. He was caught in the full current, not in any of the destroying eddyings of the side upon which I had counted to twist his legs off and wring his neck. Like the soap-bubble it is true, he was blown into various odd fantastic shapes, such as crullers resolve themselves into when not properly looked after, but there was no dismembering of his body. He struggled hard to free himself, and such grotesque attitudes as his figure assumed I never saw even in one of Aubrey Beardsley's finest pictures; and once, as his leg and right arm verged on the edge of one of the outside eddies, I hoped to see these members elongated like a piece of elastic until they snapped off; but, with a superhuman struggle, he got them free, with the loss only of one of his fingers, by which time the current had blown him across the room and directly in front of my fender. To keep from going up the chimney, he tried to brace himself against this with his feet, but missing the rail, as helpless as a feather, he floated, toes first, into the fireplace, and thence, kicking, struggling, and swearing profanely, disappeared into the flue. It was too exciting a moment for me to laugh over my triumph, but shortly there came a nervous reaction which made me hysterical as I thought of his odd appearance; and then following close upon this came the dashing of my hopes. An infernal misplaced, uncalled-for back gust, a diversion in which, thanks to an improper construction, my chimney frequently indulges, blew the unhappy creature back into the room again, strained, sprained, panting, minus the finger he had lost, and so angry that he quivered all over.