rel feared, and yet knew he had,
in a sense, the better of me; the helpless old man between us was his
shield.

"Young man," he said at last, in the same booming monotone, "have you
the gift of the seeing eye?"

"I have more the gift of the feeling fist, I think," said I, with what
calmness I could muster. "If you doubt it, sir, I shall be pleased to
show you. I am Nicol Pendarves, as a soothsayer like yourself will have
guessed already. Perhaps you will honor me with your name and business
here?"

"Many names are mine," he answered, and made a solemn gesture. "Many
names are mine----"

"Doubtless," I said; "but I meant your _last_ alias."

He went on, unruffled, in his great voice, as if I had not spoken: "Many
names have been mine through the uncounted eons--many names. In this
flesh men call me Constantine Paphluoides."

It was no wonder Chepstow could not turn its tongue about that name;
that and his manner together must have dumfounded our straight-thinking
townspeople. I do not remember--indeed, I took no pains to note--what
else he said; bits of mythology, history, poetry, rolled from him in a
cataract of meaningless noise. Had I been an ardent disciple sitting at
his feet, he could not have feigned a greater exaltation. The fellow was
at once dull and crafty; he loosed this gust of windy rhetoric at me as
if he thought to win upon me by mere sound and fury signifying nothing.

I got up at length, when I had had enough of him, and, walking across to
where he sat, "Mr. Constantine Paphluoides," said I, "this is my house;
I give you until to-morrow morning to leave it; you will go quietly and
without any formalities of farewell. You will find it expedient to obey
me: otherwise, although I have not consulted the mirror of Time and
Space, I should not be surprised if it revealed you, to the seeing eye,
in the town jail and later in the stocks."

He made no answer, but sat staring at me, blinking, and opening and
shutting his mouth in a gasping fashion like a fish. I had striven to
speak quietly, but (being in a breathing heat of anger) must
unconsciously have raised my voice, for unexpectedly, and, as it were,
for a warning, my grandfather came out of his semi-stupor and
straightened up, eying me over with a kind of wandering severity.

"Nicol, go to bed! You hear me? Go to bed!" He reached, cursing, for his
cane. There was a grotesque familiarity in the act. With that very cane
he had sought to coerce me