"You are very insolent. Let me give you a warning. You seem to be a powerful man: in the hands of my master you would be a babe, although you are so much larger. And were I to tell him what you have said, there would not be a sound piece of skin on you. Now, let me hear no more of you." "With the greatest pleasure, madam. I am sure I can't understand whatever could bring me here." "But I can;" she answered, more to her own thoughts than to mine, as she shut the door quite on my heels, and left me to my own devices. I felt almost as much amiss as if I were in an evil dream of being chased through caves of rock by some of my very best customers, all bearing red-hot toasting forks, and pelting me with my own good fish. It is the very worst dream I have, and it never comes after a common supper; which proves how clear my conscience is. And even now I might have escaped, because there were side passages; and for a minute I stood in doubt, until there came into my mind the tales of the pack of hounds he kept, and two or three people torn to pieces, and nobody daring to interfere. Also, I wanted to see him again, for he beat everybody I had ever seen; and I longed to be able to describe him to a civilised audience at the "Jolly Sailors." Therefore I knocked at the door of his room, approaching it very carefully, and thanking the Lord for His last great mercy in having put my knife into my head. "You may come in," was the answer I got at last; and so in I went; and a queerer room I never did go into. But wonderful as the room was surely, and leaving on memory a shade of half-seen wonders afterwards, for the time I had no power to look at anything but the man. People may laugh (and they always do until they gain experience) at the idea of one man binding other men prisoners to his will. For all their laughing, there stands the truth; and the men who resist such influence best are those who do not laugh at it. I have seen too much of the tricks of the world to believe in anything supernatural; but the granting of this power is most strictly within nature's scope; and somebody must have it. One man has the gift of love, that everybody loves him; another has the gift of hate, that nobody comes near him; the third, and far the rarest gift, combines the two others (one more, one less), and adds to them both the gift of fear. I felt, as I tried to meet his gaze and found my eyes quiver away from it, that the further I kept from this man's sight, the better it would be for me. He sat in a high-backed chair, and pointed to a three-legged stool, as much as to say, "You may even sit down." This I did, and waited for him. "Your name is David Llewellyn," he said, caring no more to look at me; "you came from the coast of Glamorgan, three days ago, in the Rose of Devon schooner." "Ketch, your reverence, if you please. The difference is in the mizzen-mast."