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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
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