he action of a violent domestic
scene, in which the angry passions were strenuously engaged. I hardly
knew what to conclude from this incoherent pantomime. Either Astraea was
there, in the midst of a stormy contention; or she had left the house,
and they were disputing furiously over the causes of her departure.

After I had been some time watching this unintelligible phantasmagoria,
and vainly endeavoring to collect a meaning for it, the hall-door
opened, and in the momentary gleam of light that shot into the street I
saw the dwarf issuing out, muffled to the ears in a cloak. He stood for
a moment on the pavement, and adjusting his cloak more carefully about
his face, and crushing his hat down over his eyes, he set off at a quick
pace in an opposite direction to that part of the street where I was
standing. I confess I felt ashamed of the espionage in which I was
occupied, and although I followed my mercurial fiend at a safe distance,
for the distinct purpose of earthing him wherever he was going, I by no
means liked the office which a sort of fatality had forced upon me. But
I was somewhat reconciled to it by a secret conviction that the
abominable little demon had himself come out upon an equally
discreditable expedition, which I soon detected from the infinite pains
he took to elude observation.

Instead of keeping in the public streets, he darted down numerous dark
alleys and lanes, and once with considerable difficulty I chased him
through the unsavory depths of a straggling mews, where he doubled in an
out with such rapidity as to render it no easy matter to keep upon his
track without betraying myself. Two or three times I nearly lost sight
of him; and it was not until he emerged out of a gloomy passage, of the
existence of which I was until that moment ignorant, into the street
where I lived, that I had the least suspicion of the direction he was
taking. It was presently evident that his object had some reference to
me, for he had no sooner entered the street than he darted into the deep
recess of a hall-door, where he stood for full ten minutes crouched and
transfixed, looking up at my windows, which were exactly opposite to
him.

Fortunately I was able to note his movements without being myself
perceived, as I lurked in the shadow of the passage from whence he had
just issued.

The windows of my chambers being dark, I presume he concluded that I was
from home; and under that impression, no doubt, he cross