The light, which was furnished by a candle, was raised in the air at
about the height of a man's face, and directly behind it a man's face
appeared.

"Great heavens!" whispered Robert as the strange figure advanced, "it is
uncle!"

"Steady, now!" whispered the detective; "not a word or you will ruin
everything."

Revealed by the weird light, the miserable countenance of the miser had
never looked so contemptible.

The sputtering flame seemed to have the power to betray all the miserly
emotions and mean parsimonies usually concealed behind its starved
pallor.

The lips had fallen inanely apart with an absurd look of silly wonder.

The eyes were wide open and stared directly ahead with the most
unnatural expression or lack of it that Robert had ever beheld in the
visage of mortal man.

Even the detective, accustomed as he was to all sorts of uncommon
spectacles, could not repress a slight disposition to shudder.

One bony hand grasped the candlestick, and the other held some sort of
round object, to which Robert directed his attention.

By the sudden motion he made the detective knew that the young man had
discovered what this object was, and pressed his arm warningly.

_It was one of the canvas bags from the recess in the wall._

Just before the opening of the bin his uncle paused, like a speculative
phantom, as if to consider its next doleful move.

His entire countenance, upon nearer view, like the canvas which the
painter has roughly outlined, was suggestive of anything, according to
the fancy of the beholder.

Upon this spiritless blank Robert depicted, with a morbid genius and the
stimulation of his unnatural surroundings, all that was reminiscent of
his uncle's littleness.

But this uneasy transit from the room upstairs to the bin below, the
vacant, irresponsible ensemble, the inscrutable determination to fulfill
some strange obligation, enforced by what influence or moral unrest he
could not tell, culminated in the mind of the young man in the only
possible explanation:

His uncle was engaged in the unaware execution of some fixed idea.

He was responding to an uncontrollable, secret impulse, and Robert,
guiding himself by the touch of his hand in order to locate his lips as
close to the ear of the detective as he might, whispered with
conviction:

"Somnambulist!"

"No," replied Gratz--"worse; be silent."

Amazed and wondering what could possibly be worse, and rummaging through
the garre