"And now, my dear sir," resumed his interlocutor, "whether or not you believe my story, you will, I am sure, perceive how important is the commission I intrust to your keeping, and how well I am inclined to pay you for all of your trouble. I trust, therefore, you will consider me to be lacking neither in courtesy nor in hospitality if I beg you to withdraw, and to return to your own house. So great is my threatened danger that I dare not even accompany you to my cabriolet that is awaiting you where we left it; but in lieu of myself I shall send with you an attendant who is altogether attached to my interests, and who will serve as a guard until you and your charge are safely ensconced in your lodgings." Thereupon he once more clapped his hands together. Again the same mysterious attendant, who had before replied to the summons, appeared in instant response, and, in obedience to elaborate directions delivered in a foreign tongue, of which the young lawyer understood not a single iota, bowed to our hero, and indicated that he was prepared to accompany him upon his return. With this concludes the first chapter of our narrative, with only this to add, that our hero--under the escort of his singular attendant--arrived safely at home, where he hid his treasure casket under the bed, in the remotest corner of the room, until he could otherwise dispose of it. HERE FOLLOWS THE SECOND CHAPTER CHAPTER TWO The _Remarkable_ BEHAVIOR of the LAWYER'S _Second_ CLIENT. As the ingenuous reader may readily imagine, what little remained of that night was passed with no great ease or repose by our hero. But little slumber visited his eyelids, and that little so disturbed by vivid and diabolical visions of terror that he had better have remained awake than to have fallen into so portentous a sleep. In a succession of monstrous images he continually beheld his client distorted by the most grotesque and fantastic pangs of dissolution; as continually he was haunted by visions of the journey he was about to undertake; and such phantoms were always accompanied by corresponding dreams of the strong box of treasure. In one of these tremendous visions he beheld himself searching in a deep bed of sliding sand for the jewels which had been lost from the overturned casket, while a dreadful form leaned out of the window of the post-chaise upon the bank above, shrieking to him to hasten or it would immediately perish. It was from this portentous dream that he awoke to find the early winter daylight struggling through the window-shades, and to an immediate realization of the strange and inexplicable commission that awaited him.