At the foot of the steps he stopped again, fumbling in his pockets. The jangled state of his nerves demanded the sooth of nicotine. From one pocket he exhumed nearly half of a cigar and from the other a box of matches. He inserted the cigar between his lips and undertook to strike a light. These were a new kind of matches--long, thick ones, with big white-and-black heads. Judge Priest had brought home a supply of them the day before, and Jeff, attracted vaguely by their novelty of appearance and their augmented size, had been moved to borrow a box of them off the dining-room sideboard without mentioning the matter to any one. The misanthrope drew one of the big matches down the plastered side of the entryway. It sputtered and snapped under the friction of the stroke, but declined to burst into flame. Jeff cast it away and tried another, with no different result, except that the stick part snapped off short. Either the prevalent dampness had adversely affected them or they were defective and untrustworthy by reason of some flaw in their manufacture. But he noted that both matches had left queer luminous streaks upon the dingy wall. Morbidly reflecting that in this night of his bad luck he was to be denied even the small solace of a smoke, Jeff absently fingered a third match between his fingers, plucking at its bulbous tip with a thumb nail. Instantly the effect of this was such as mildly to startle him; for at once on his finger ends appeared a strange spectral glow, as though he had been fondling some new and especially well-illuminated breed of lightning bug in his naked hand. At any other time, almost, this phenomenon, so simply accomplished, would have set Jeff's nimble fancy at work devising experimental means of entertainment to be derived therefrom; but now and here, in his existent frame of thought, the discovery gave him no pleasure whatsoever. He pouched cigar butt and matches, and stepped forth from the stair passage into the drizzle. Out of the darkness a figure reeled unsteadily. It bumped into him with such violence as to drive him back into the doorway, and then caromed off, rocking on its heels to regain its balance. Jeff made out that the awk-ward one was a person of his own colour and sex. “Whut's ailin' you, man?” he demanded irritably. “Ain't a whole sidewalk wide 'nuff fur you, widout you tryin' to knock folkses down?” “Huh?” The wavering pedestrian exhaled a thick grunt, which brought with it an aroma of stick gin. He tottered forward again, throwing out his clutching hands for some support. “Go on 'way frum me!” Jeff flung out an arm to fend the other off; but the gesture froze solid while yet his elbow was crooked, and Jeff cowered back, transfixed and limber with terror, too scared to run, too weak to cry out.