He came in at last, after tapping very lightly on the door-panel, unsolicited and unexpected, to my presence--the same inscrutable, hirsute horror I had seen before, with his trudging, scraping walk, his square and stalwart frame, his gloved extremities, his light, blue-glasses, hat and cane in hand, a being as I felt to chill one's very marrow. "Is it true vat I hear," he asked, pausing at some distance, "dat you vant to have dat leetle hompback chilt for a companion, Miss Monfort?" "It is true, Dr. Englehart." "And vat can your motif be? Heh? I must study dat for a leetle before I can decide de question, or even trost him as a human being in your hands." "Lunatics are rarely governed by motives at all," I replied, "only impulses. I want human companionship, however, that is all. I sicken in this solitude--I am dying of mental inanition." "It is true, you look delicate indeed, I am pained to see." The accent, was forgotten here for a moment, and an expression of real sympathy was perceivable in his low, husky voice. "Command me in any way dat accords wid my duty," he continued, "yes! de boy shall come! To interest, to amuse you, is perhaps--to cure!" "Thank you; I shall await his advent anxiously; be careful not to disappoint me." "Oh, not for vorlds!" "You are very kind; I believe, though, that is all we have to say to one another, Dr. Englehart." "You are bettair, then?" he said, advancing steadily toward me in spite of this dismissal. "You need no more leetle pill? Are you quite sure of dat?" "Not now, at least, Dr. Englehart." "Permit me, then, to feel your pulse vonce more. I shall determine den more perfectly dis vexing subject of your sanity." "Thank you; I decline your opinion on a matter so little open to difference. Be good enough to retire, Dr. Englehart. Let me at least breathe freely in the solitude to which I am consigned." "I mean no offence, yonge lady," he said, meekly, falling back to the centre-table on which was burning my shaded astral lamp--for I had left it as he approached, instinctively to seek the protection of an interposing chair, on the back of which I stood leaning as I spoke. He, too, remained standing, with one hand pressed firmly backward on the top of the table, in front of which he poised himself, gesticulating earnestly yet respectfully. His position was an error of mistaken confidence in his own make-up, such as we see occur every day among those even long habituated to disguise. As he stood I distinctly saw a line of light traced between his cheek and one of his bushy side-whiskers. That line of light let in a flood of evidence. The man was an impostor, a tool, as criminal as his employer--not the footprint on the sand was more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than that luminous streak to me, nor the cause of wilder conjecture.