What he beheld was a little yellow man with a flat, fat face and black and brilliant eyes. He had composed himself cross-legged upon a divan of crimson silk, surrounded by luxurious cushions of embroidered patterns, and sheltered by crimson silk curtains resplendent with gold, which hung suspended from the walls behind him. His figure was almost entirely enveloped by a purple velvet robe, thickly studded with jewels and ornamented in arabesque designs with seed pearls and gold. Upon his nether parts were a pair of crimson velvet trousers, and upon his head was a large and voluminous turban, enriched with a single diamond of excessive magnitude and brilliancy, which glowed in the centre of the folds of the head-dress like a star of inconceivable size and brightness. In his hand, brilliant with a multitude of rings, he held the mouth-piece of the long and snake-like water-pipe, the smoke from which he inhaled with every appearance of entire enjoyment and satisfaction, emitting it now and then in a thin cloud, which immediately dissolved in the heavy and perfumed air. His face was devoid of all expression, and he regarded Griscombe and the young lady with an impassivity of countenance that was in some inexplicable way infinitely ominous. Upon one side of this figure stood he with whom Griscombe had once played jack-straws, and upon the other side the old gentleman with the white beard whom he had indulged in the game of tit-tat-toe. Both men were now clad in Oriental garb, far more appropriate to their appearance than the garments of civilization in which our hero had first beheld them. Near at hand, as though standing upon guard, were a half-dozen or more negroes clad entirely in black, and each armed with a naked scimitar, the blades whereof shone now and then like lightning in the dazzling light of the thousand waxen tapers that illuminated the expanse of the apartment. A long carpet of extreme richness extended the length of the apartment; and upon the floor, in front of the central figure of all this remarkable and terrifying apparition of Oriental splendor, reposed the fatal portmanteau that Griscombe had conveyed with such extraordinary pains from Bordentown. At sight of this object it seemed to our hero that all that which before had appeared so inexplicable became instantly entirely clear, and it was as though his very vitals dissolved with the fear of that which might in a moment befall the innocent ward confided to his care.