uestion; I
could only wait until he happened to look my way.

My patience was not severely tried: he soon replaced the stopper in the
bottle, and, looking up from it, saw me. With his free hand, he quickly
removed the handkerchief, and spoke.

"Let me ask you to wait in the boat-house," he said; "I will come to you
directly." He pointed round the corner of the new cottage; indicating of
course the side of it that was farthest from the old building.

Following his directions, I first passed the door that he used in leaving
or returning to his room, and then gained the bank of the river. On my
right hand rose the mill building, with its big waterwheel--and, above
it, a little higher up the stream, I recognized the boat-house; built out
in the water on piles, and approached by a wooden pier.

No structure of this elaborate and expensive sort would have been set up
by my father, for the miller's convenience. The boat-house had been
built, many years since, by a rich retired tradesman with a mania for
aquatic pursuits. Our ugly river had not answered his expectations, and
our neighborhood had abstained from returning his visits. When he left
us, with his wherries and canoes and outriggers, the miller took
possession of the abandoned boat-house. "It's the sort of fixture that
don't pay nohow," old Toller remarked. "Suppose you remove it--there's a
waste of money. Suppose you knock it to pieces--is it worth a rich
gentleman's while to sell a cartload of firewood?" Neither of these
alternatives having been adopted, and nobody wanting an empty boat-house,
the clumsy mill boat, hitherto tied to a stake, and exposed to the worst
that the weather could do to injure it, was now snugly sheltered under a
roof, with empty lockers (once occupied by aquatic luxuries) gaping on
either side of it.

I was looking out on the river, and thinking of all that had happened
since my first meeting with Cristel by moonlight, when the voice of the
deaf man made itself discordantly heard, behind me.

"Let me apologize for receiving you here," he said; "and let me trouble
you with one more of my confessions. Like other unfortunate deaf people,
I suffer from nervous irritability. Sometimes, we restlessly change our
places of abode. And sometimes, as in my case, we take refuge in variety
of occupation. You remember the ideal narratives of crime which I was so
fond of writing at one time?"

I gave the affirmative answer, in the usual way.

"Well