Of the two men still whispering in the corner, the leader was of singular appearance. In figure he was dumpy and comfortably rounded, which was, I suppose, the reason of the nickname, "The Dumpling," which I afterwards heard applied to him. His neck was so short, and his huge head was set so closely upon his high shoulders, and thrust forward so prominently, as almost to suggest the hunchback. But if the figure was grotesque, the clean-shaven face was striking and powerful. It was absolutely grey in hue, like the face of a dead or dying man; but so far from being spare and haggard, as one would have expected from so unhealthy and colourless a complexion, the face, like the neck, was full, and the features of the fleshly aquiline type. The forehead was high and intellectual, but the eyes were his most singular feature. Accustomed as I am, as the phrase goes, "to read character," this man utterly baffled me, for the eyes of two totally different men looked out from the same head. On the occasion of which I am speaking his eyes, when they rested upon me, seemed the incarnation of all that is cunning, cruel, treacherous. Yet in the eyes of this same man, as I came to know him thereafter, I have seen the most singular and gentle melancholy. Even on this eventful evening, when I saw him at his worst, his eyes, as he turned from me to the fellow to whom he was speaking, and for whom he seemed to entertain something like affection, softened as if in response to some inner workings of his mind, and I saw in their depths a dumb, inarticulate look like that one sees sometimes in the eyes of a dog. As he was talking he turned suddenly--perhaps because of something which his companion had said--and looked me straight in the eyes. I shall no doubt be laughed at when I say that I was suddenly seized by the most singular sense of helplessness. My powers seemed paralysed at their centre. Minded as I was to struggle or to cry out against the influence he was exerting upon me, I could do neither. Then--whether the result of mesmerism or of thought suggestion on his part, or of a sort of second sight on mine, I cannot say; but I saw, as in a tableau, myself lying helpless upon my back, with this man kneeling on my chest, his eyes looking into mine as they were looking now, and an upraised knife in his hand. What could it mean? I am not a nervous, neurotic person, but a healthy, normal, open-air being, who has never dabbled in the mysteries of spiritualism, hypnotism, second-sight, or clairvoyance; nor had such tableaux as I saw when looking into this man's eyes ever before presented themselves to me.