“He is not in my house!” declared Madame Clementine. “No blue man is ever in my house!” She crossed herself. There is a sensation like having a slide pulled from one’s head; the shock passes in the fraction of a second. Sunshine, and rioting nasturtiums, the whole natural world, including Clementine’s puzzled brown face, were no more distinct to-day than the blue man and the woman with floating hair had been yesterday. I had seen a man who shot down to instant death in the pit under the Giant’s Stairway thirty-five years ago. I had seen a woman, who, perhaps, once thought herself intentionally and strangely deserted, seek and meet him after she had been killed at four o’clock! This experience, set down in my note-book and repeated to no one, remains associated with the Old World scent of ginger. For I remember hearing Clementine say through a buzzing, “You come in, madame--you must have de hot wine and jahjah!” End of Project Gutenberg’s The Blue Man, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood