of a tap is it you're drinking?" So saying, he took up a flask
of the baron's very best and poured out about half a glass. Having held
the glass first on one side and then on the other, winked at it twice,
sniffed it, and gone through the remainder of the pantomime in which
connoisseurs indulge, he drank it with great deliberation, and smacked
his lips scientifically. "Hum! Johannisberg! and not so _very_ bad--for
you. But I tell you what it is, baron, you'll have to bring out better
stuff than this when I put my legs on your mahogany."

"Well, you are a cool fish," said the baron. "However, you're rather a
joke, so, now you're here, we may as well enjoy ourselves. Smoke?"

"Not anything you're likely to offer me!"

"Confound your impudence!" roared the baron, with a horribly
complicated oath. "That tobacco is as good as any in all Rhineland."

"That's a nasty cough you've got, baron. Don't excite yourself, my dear
boy; I dare say you speak according to your lights. I don't mean
Vesuvians, you know, but your opportunities for knowing anything about
it. Try a weed out of my case, and I expect you'll alter your opinion."

The baron took the proffered case and selected a cigar. Not a word was
spoken till it was half consumed, when the baron took it, for the first
time, from his lips, and said, gently, with the air of a man
communicating an important discovery in the strictest confidence, "Das
ist gut!"

"Thought you'd say so," said the visitor. "And now, as you like the
cigar, I should like you to try a thimbleful of what _I_ call wine. I
must warn you, though, that it is rather potent, and may produce effects
you are not accustomed to."

"Bother that, if it is as good as the weed," said the baron; "I haven't
taken my usual quantity by four bottles yet."

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you, that's all. I don't think you'll
find it unpleasant, though it is rather strong when you're not
accustomed to it." So saying, the goblin produced from some mysterious
pocket a black, big-bellied bottle, crusted, apparently, with the dust
of ages.

It did strike the baron as peculiar, that the bottle, when once
produced, appeared nearly as big round as the goblin himself; but he was
not the sort of man to stick at trifles, and he pushed forward his glass
to be filled just as composedly as if the potion had been shipped and
paid duty, in the most commonplace way.

The glass was filled and emptied, but the baron uttered not his