‘Ah,’ said Lucius with a long-drawn sigh, which might indicate either disappointment or relief, ‘then you’re not the man I was half inclined to take you for. Yet that,’ dropping into soliloquy, ‘was a foolish fancy. There may be more than one man in the world who plays like a devil.’ ‘You are not particularly complimentary,’ returned the stranger, touching the violin strings lightly with the tips of his skeleton fingers, repeating the dismal burden of his melody in those pizzacato notes. ‘You don’t consider it a compliment. Rely upon it, if Lucifer played the fiddle at all, he’d play well. The spirit who said, “Evil, be thou my good,” would hardly do anything by halves. Do you remember what Corelli said to Strengk when he first heard him play? “I have been called Arcangelo, but by heavens, sir, you must be Arcidiavolo.” I would give a great deal to have your power over that instrument. Was that your own composition you played just now?’ ‘I believe so, or a reminiscence; but if the latter, I can’t tell you its source. I left off playing by book a long time ago; but I have a reserve fund of acquired music—chiefly German—and I have no doubt I draw upon it occasionally.’ ‘Yes,’ repeated Lucius thoughtfully, ‘I should like to play as you do, only—’ ‘Only what?’ asked the stranger. ‘I should be inclined to fancy there was something uncomfortable—uncanny, as the Scotch say—lurking in the deep waters of my mind, if my fancies took the shape yours did just now.’ ‘As for me,’ exclaimed Geoffrey, with agreeable candour, ‘without wishing either to flatter or upbraid, I can only say that I feel as if I had been listening to a distinguished member of the royal orchestra in Pandemonium—the Paganini of Orcus.’ The stranger laughed—a somewhat harsh and grating cachinnation. ‘You don’t like minors?’ he said. ‘I was a minor myself for a long time, and I only object to the species on the score of impecuniosity,’ replied Geoffrey. ‘O, I beg your pardon; you mean the key. If that composition of yours was minor, I certainly lean to the major. Could you not oblige us with a Christy-minstrel melody to take the taste out of our mouths?’ The stranger deigned no answer to that request, but sat down on the rough log which served Lucius for a seat, and made a kind of settle by the ample fireplace. With lean arms folded and gaze bent upon the fire, he lapsed into thoughtful silence. The blaze of the pine-logs, now showing vivid tinges of green or blue as the resin bubbled from their tough hide, lit up the faces, and gave something of grotesque to each. Seen by this medium, the stranger’s face was hardly a pleasant object for contemplation, and was yet singular enough to arrest the gaze of him who looked upon it.