's all a mist; I can see nothing," the other answered, after a pause.

I could have found it in me to laugh at the whole miserable hocus-pocus,
had I been less indignant. The situation was, besides, sufficiently
grave; and as I listened to this silly and profane juggling, and
observed the wildness of my grandfather's bearing, it became plain to me
that he could not long endure such an influence. I guessed from his talk
that the old man's disorder was based upon the idea of treasure lost,
sunk, or hidden hereabout; for our coast was dangerous, a menace to
vessels, and not innocent, besides, of smugglers and worse. Perhaps the
poverty of his later years was at the root of his delusion; perhaps his
madness would have taken this form anyhow. However he had fallen into
the fat man's hands, this was the secret of the latter's power. While I
pondered gloomily, the sitting (so to call it) came to an end. Perhaps
my unwelcome appearance somewhat contracted it. My grandfather lapsed
into his chair, his chin on his chest, brooding. Excitement died in him
almost visibly, like the flickering down of a spent fire. Instead of
eighty, he looked a hundred and eighty, and his face was as lifeless as
a mummy's.

"Zaira!" said the fat man, raising his thick lids (but I fancied he had
already taken some shrewd peeps at me from under them), "I have slept,
and the spirit has spoken. Arise! take away the mirror of Time and
Space!"

And hereupon the girl, advancing with a shamed glance at me, carried the
globe to one of the lockers, shoved it in, and slammed the door on it
savagely.

"Have a care!" the seer warned her somberly; the mirror of Time and
Space, apparently, was not immune from the ordinary risks of mirrors, as
one might have expected so august an instrument to be. When speaking
aloud thus, he used a great rolling, sonorous voice; it filled the room
until the very window-panes vibrated.

She gave him a look of angry rebellion, opened her lips as if to retort
with some stinging word, stood irresolute a moment with eyes that
wavered between the three of us, then walked off, leaving us sitting
facing each other in silence.

The fat man and I exchanged a long stare, I choking down my temper, he
smooth and placid, to outward seeming, as the idol he resembled. The
resolution with which he stuck to his silly pose was, in its way, a
rogue's masterpiece; nothing more exasperating than this stolid
effrontery was ever devised. The scound