At that moment, and while indulging in a loud and mocking laugh, his countenance suddenly changed; he grew very pale, the glass fell from his pea-green eye, and the lighted papirosse from his lips; all his natural assurance and insouciance deserted him, and he looked as startled and bewildered as if a cannon-shot had just grazed his nose. I turned with surprise at this sudden change, and saw the face and figure of Colonel Tolstoff, who had limped into the room and been regarding us for half a minute unperceived. He stood behind me, grim and stern as Ajax, and was gazing at Guilfoyle with eyes that, under their bristling brows, glittered like those of a basilisk, and seemed to fascinate him. "We have not met since that night at Dunamunde!" exclaimed Tolstoff, in a voice of concentrated fury; "but, I thank God and St. Sergius, we have met at last--yes, at last! And so you know each other--_you two?_" he added, in German, while bestowing a withering glance on me. "Dunamunde!" said I, sternly, as the name of that place recalled something of a strange story concerning Tolstoff told by Guilfoyle to Lord Pottersleigh at Craigaderyn; "and you two would seem to have known each other and been friends of old, that is, if you are the same Count Tolstoff whom he saved from the machinations of a certain Colonel Nicolaevitch, then commanding the Marine Infantry at Riga." "What rubbish is this you speak?" demanded the other, with angry surprise; "there never was a _Count_ Tolstoff; and I am the Pulkovnick Nicolaevitch Tolstoff who commanded in Dunamunde, and was custodian of eighty thousand silver roubles, all government money. This ruffian was my friend--my chief friend then, though of the gaming table; but he joined in a plot, with others like himself, among whom was the Head of the Police, to rob me. He admitted them masked into my rooms, when they shot me down with my own pistols, and left me, with a broken thigh, bound hand and foot and cruelly gagged, while they escaped in safety across the Prussian frontier and got to Berlin, where they started a gaming-house. But he is here--here in my power at last; and sweetly and surely, I shall have such vengeance as that power gives me. Ha! look at him, the speechless coward; he has no bones in his tongue now!" he added, using a favourite Russian taunt. "All over--run to earth, by Jove!" muttered Guilfoyle, with trembling lips, forgetting about the papers he had brought, his new character of a Russian officer, and forgetting even to deny his identity; "I have thrown the dice for the last time, and d--nation, they have turned up aces!"