ke!' he cried, in a
frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost
sinking to the ground as he spoke.

Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite
a moment before he assumed an erect position, and I saw two or three
quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a
long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man
stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and
broken:

'Is it gone?'

'Certainly it is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have
affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on
your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had
been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned the _shape_ it had
assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you
afraid of worms, or only of _shoulder-straps_?' And I laughed at the
absurdity of the latter supposition.

'Humph!' said Martin, who seemed to have recovered his equanimity, but
not shaken off the impression. 'You laugh. Perhaps you will laugh more
when I tell you that it was not the worm, _as_ a worm, of which I was
thinking at all, and that my terror--yes, I need not mince words, I was
for the moment in abject terror--had to do altogether with the shape
that little crawling pest had assumed, and the part of my coat on which
he had taken a fancy to lodge himself!'

'No, I should not laugh,' I said; 'but I _should_ ask an explanation of
what seems very strange and unaccountable. Shall I lacerate a feeling,
or tread upon ground made sacred by a grief, if I do so?'

'Not at all,' was the reply. 'In fact, I feel at this moment very much
as the Ancient Mariner may have done the moment before he met the
wedding-guest--when, in fact, he had nobody to button-hole, and felt the
strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this
reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be;
and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the
noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in
the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a
bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with
green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular
episode in an odd life.'

Half an hour after, the conditions of which he spoke had been
accomplished, over the marble