with a long, black mustache, and having a pair of
forbidding, deeply set, and extremely restless black eyes. A crimson
handkerchief beneath a lace cocked hat was tied tightly around the
head, and a pair of silver earrings, which caught the light of the
candle, gleamed and twinkled against the inky darkness of the
passageway beyond.

This extraordinary being, without favoring our hero with any word of
apology for his intrusion, immediately thrust himself forward into the
room, and stretching his long, lean, bird-like neck so as to direct his
gaze over the intervening table, fixed a gaping and concentrated stare
upon the figure lying still and motionless in the centre of the room.

"Vat you do dare," said he, with a guttural and foreign accent, and
thereupon, without waiting for a reply, came forward and knelt down
beside the dead man. After thrusting his hand into the silent and
shrunken bosom, he presently looked up and fixed his penetrating eyes
upon our hero's countenance, who, benumbed and bedazed with his
despair, still stood like one enchained in the bonds of a nightmare.
"He vas dead!" said the stranger, and Jonathan nodded his head in reply.

"Vy you keel ze man?" inquired his interlocutor.

"Indeed," cried Jonathan, finding a voice at last, but one so hoarse
that he could hardly recognize it for his own, "I know not what to make
of the affair! But, indeed, I do assure thee, friend, that I am
entirely innocent of what thou seest."

The stranger still kept his piercing gaze fixed upon our hero's
countenance, and Jonathan, feeling that something further was demanded
of him, continued: "I am, indeed, a victim of a most extravagant and
extraordinary adventure. This evening, coming an entire stranger to
this country, I was introduced into the house of a beautiful female,
who bestowed upon me a charge that appeared to me to be at once
insignificant and absurd. Behold this little ivory ball," said he,
drawing the globe from his pocket, and displaying it between his thumb
and finger. "It is this that appears to have brought all this disaster
upon me; for, coming from the house of the young woman, the man whom
thou now beholdest lying dead upon the floor induced me to come to this
place. Having inveigled me hither, he demanded of me to give him at
once this insignificant trifle. Upon my refusing to do so, he
assaulted me with every appearance of a mad and furious inclination to
deprive me of my life!"

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