Mr. Fox-Cordery's judgment upon these couplets was that the writer's brain was softening; and considering that he had wasted sufficient time in making discoveries of no value, he stepped to the narrow bed, and contemplated the sleeper. The contrast between the two men was noteworthy, but it was the good or bad fortune of Mr. Fox-Cordery always to furnish a contrast of more or less interest when he stood side by side with his fellow-men. At this moment his clean, pallid face, with its carefully arranged hair and drooping mustache, wore an ugly expression singularly at odds with his diminutive stature. It is not pleasant for a man with a thorough belief in his own supremacy to suspect that he has been tricked by one whom he gauges to be of meaner capacity than himself; but this had been Mr. Fox-Cordery's suspicion since his interview with John Dixon, and he had come hither either to verify or falsify it. The sleeper's age could not have been less than sixty years; he was a large-limbed man, six feet in height, and proportionately broad and massive. His full-fleshed eyelids with their shaggy eyebrows, his abundant tangled hair, and the noble gray beard descending to his breast, denoted a being of power and sensibility; and though he lay full length and unconscious beneath the little man who was gazing wrathfully upon him, he seemed to tower majestically above the pygmy form. Mr. Fox-Cordery shook the sleeper violently, and called: "Rathbeal, you scoundrel; just you wake up! Do you hear? No shamming! Wake up!" Rathbeal slowly opened his eyes, which like his hair were gray, and fixed them upon Mr. Fox-Cordery. Recognition of his unexpected visitor did not immediately come to him, and he continued to gaze in silence upon the intruder. Half asleep and half awake as he was, there was a magnetic quality in his eyes which did not tend to put Mr. Fox-Cordery at his ease; and in order to make a proper assertion of himself, he said, in a bullying tone: "When you have had your stare out, perhaps you'll let me know." The voice assisted Rathbeal, who, closing his eyes and with a subtle smile on his lips, murmured, in perfect English: "The enemy thy secret sought to gain: A hand unseen repelled the beast profane." "Beast yourself!" retorted Mr. Fox-Cordery. "Here, no going off to sleep again! You're wanted, particularly wanted; and I don't intend to stand any of your infernal nonsense!" But these lordly words, peremptorily uttered, did not seem to produce their intended effect, for Rathbeal, still with closed eyes, murmured: "Be my deeds or good or evil, look thou to thyself alone; All men, when their work is ended, reap the harvest they have sown." The couplet, being of the order of those affixed to the walls, conveyed no definite idea, and certainly no satisfaction, to Mr. Fox-Cordery's mind. He cried masterfully: