A sickness came upon the victor. He mopped his dripping forehead. He turned to leave the presence-chamber of death and doom; he picked up as he did so the severed limb, a casual glance at which confirmed his general impression that the gaunt game had been but a particularly large and loathly wolf, such as occasionally penetrated the precincts of towns in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees. Ataurresagasti walked down straight into the reception room of the night before. For the moment the possible alarm of Lisalda at that terrible shriek of dissolution of the cabalist had not even entered his mind. His object was to summon Aquelarre. To his surprise he found him crouching there already white as a ghost apparently with fear. He sprang to his feet at sight of the sailor, and barely suppressed a cry. This time it was the sailor that read, and the landlord's face that provided reading matter. Amazement was writ legibly in every line of it, and his eyes were opened to the size of saucers. And Ataurresagasti asked himself, without finding answer, what connexion all this had with the attempt to drug him, which he had discovered the preceding evening. The two men stared at one another for some minutes without finding speech, of which indeed the innkeeper, at any rate, seemed incapable. The word when taken up was taken up by Ataurresagasti. "My pharmaceutical friend seems somewhat upset by my early appearance after draining the drowsy cup which he compounded for me overnight." "And it is not natural that a landlord should be fearful for his slate when he sees an uncancelled score slinking downstairs to the outlet at such unearthly hour?" "Alas, for your slate (if that touch you so nearly) a fiscal fleeter than yourself has attended here this night, and collected your other lodger's scot." "What means this matin pleasantry? How goes it with the cabalist?" "Well, I hope, although I dare not think it well. His reckoning, I fear, will overreach him." "Is he dead?" "As much of him as can still be traced is unquestionably dead." "That then undid my beauty sleep. I thought I dreamed an unforgetful shriek." "'Twas murder mouthed it. God rest his soul, that died in such a case as he was overtaken in." "He died, you say, by the hand of God?" "I say by the limb of a wolf, rather, which I arriving overdue did incontinently lop from its trunk. The felon then evading by exit to me invisible, I descended hither by what impulse I scarcely know save that my intentions tended justiceward." "You meant perchance to summon authority to certify to cause of death. But this must be looked to by myself before anyone else is admitted. What became of the piece of conviction?" "Behold it!"