"Do they wrap up needles in your cigars? Look!" And I passed it across to him, indicating where, protruding from the end, which I had chopped off with the cutter on my watchguard, was the tiny point of either a needle or a pin. "Extraordinary!" he ejaculated, taking it from my hand and examining it carefully. But ere a few moments had elapsed I felt a strange sensation creeping upon me; a curious chilliness ran down my spine, my tongue seemed swelling until it filled my mouth, and my brain felt aflame. "God?" I cried, springing to my feet in alarm. "Why, I believe I'm poisoned!" "Nonsense!" he laughed. His voice seemed to sound afar off, and I saw his dog's face slowly assume an expression of evil as he sat opposite, intently watching me. A sudden dizziness seized me; a spasm of sharp pain shot through all my limbs from head to toe; my senses reeled, I could see nothing distinctly. The man Hickman's ugly visage seemed slowly to fade in a blurred, blood-red mist. At that same instant my blood was frozen by terror, for I felt convinced that this abrasion of my tongue had been planned by my companion's devilish ingenuity, and that upon that needle-point had been placed some baneful substance, the action of which was rapid and certain. I saw it all, now that it was, alas! too late. With a wild cry I stretched forth both hands to steady myself, but, staggering, only clutched the air. Then a strange and utterly unaccountable thing happened to me--stranger than has ever happened to any other living man. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. THE MARBLE HAND. I approach this and the following chapters of my secret personal history with feelings of amazement and of thankfulness that I should still be alive and able to write down the truth freely and without fear, for the events were certainly most remarkable and utterly mystifying. In no man's history has there ever been such a strange, bewildering page as the one I am about to reveal to you. Reader, as I have taken you into my confidence, so also I tell you confidentially that I myself, an ordinary man, would never have believed that in this life of ours such things were possible, had I not myself experienced them, and personally endured the frightful agony of mind which they entailed. But I am writing down in black and white upon these pages the solid unvarnished facts, fearless of contradiction, so that the whole of the strange truth shall be known, and hat she who is dearest to me on earth may be adjudged by the world with fairness and with justice. For that sole reason I have resolved to relate this romance of real life, otherwise it would ever remain in that crabbed writing in that small portfolio, or secret dossier as it is called, numbered, docketed, and reposing in the archives of the Ministry of the Interior of a certain European Power. Well, I have written the truth here, so that all who read may judge.