ler
ever thinks another gambler honest, and he lies when he says so. He knew
himself to be a rogue, and thought it diamond in the teeth of diamond;"
and, pausing and meditating, he repeated the word,
"diamond--diamond--diamond."

I looked at him in surprise. He continued to keep up the cuckoo sound,
trying to laugh, and yet totally unable to accomplish even a cackle, as
if some internal force clutched the diaphragm and mocked him, so that
his efforts were reduced to a gurgling as in cynanche--like a dog
choking with a rope round his craig, the sounds coming jerking out in
barks, and dying away again in yelps and whines.

"You will know presently why that word produces these strange effects
upon me," he at length contrived to be able to say. "Nor less the form
of the figure as painted in these hell-books. It is blazoned everywhere.
The devil wears it in fiery lines on his face as he hounds me a-nights
through these thick woods. Yet I am not afraid of it--rather court it,
as if I yearned for the burning pain of its red signature in, and in,
and in to my brain, as far as thought goes."

"Have you got mad, Graeme?" I ejaculated. "What has the figure of a
diamond, or of ten diamonds----"

"_Ten_, you would say?" he immediately cried, as he started up, and
immediately threw himself down; "_the_ ten, if you dared. You are
commissioned by the powers yonder--you, you, too, along with the others,
including the devil."

"I have no wish to be in the same commission with that great personage,"
said I, with a very poor attempt to laugh, for I felt anxious about my
friend. "I gave him up when I threw his books into the fire, and swore
never more to touch the unhallowed thing."

I perceived that my attempt at humour increased his excitement. "Repeat
the words," he cried. "Say 'the ten of diamonds' right out with open
mouth, and repeat them a thousand times, so as to give me ear-proof that
the powers yonder," pointing to the roof, "are against me."

At this moment the door of the parlour was opened by some timid hand.

"Come hither, my pretty Edith," he said, in a calmer voice, as a little
cherub-looking child, with a head so like as if, after the fashion of
Danaee's, it had been powdered by Jupiter with gold dust, and a pair of
blue eyes, as if the said god, in making them, had tried to emulate the
wing of the Halcyon in a human orb, and intended, moreover, the light
thereof to calm the storm in those of her father.

And so