You
cannot put a man who steals a diamond worth a hundred and fifty thousand
pounds in the category of common thieves. Such an act verges on the
sublime.

One of the things seen and noticed by Captain Ducie was the absence,
through illness, of the mulatto, Cleon, from his duties, and the
substitution in his place of a man whom Ducie had never seen before.
This stranger was both clever and obliging, and Platzoff himself
confessed that the fellow made such a good substitute that he missed
Cleon less than he at first feared he should have done. He was indeed
very assiduous, and found time to do many odd jobs for Captain Ducie,
who contracted quite a liking for him.

Between Ducie and Cleon there existed one of those blind unreasoning
hatreds which spring up full-armed and murderous at first sight. Such
enmities are not the less deadly because they sometimes find no relief
in words. Cleon treated Ducie with as much outward respect and courtesy
as he did any other of his master's guests; no private communication
ever passed between the two, and yet each understood the other's
feelings towards him, and both of them were wise enough to keep as far
apart as possible. Neither of them dreamed at that time of the strange
fruit which their mutual enmity was to bear in time to come. Meanwhile,
Cleon lay sick in his own room, and Captain Ducie was rather gladdened
thereby.

* * * * *

M. Platzoff rarely touched cigar or pipe till after dinner; but,
whatever company he might have, when that meal was over, it was his
invariable custom to retire for an hour or two to the room consecrated
to the uses of the Great Herb, and his guests seldom or never declined
to accompany him. To Captain Ducie, as an inveterate smoker, these
_seances_ were very pleasant.

On the very first evening of the Captain's arrival at Bon Repos, M.
Platzoff had intimated that he was an opium smoker, and that at no very
distant date he would enlighten Ducie as to the practice in question.
About a week later, as they sat down to their pipes and coffee, said
Platzoff, "This is one of my big smoke-nights. To-night I go on a
journey of discovery into Dreamland--a country that no explorations can
exhaust, where beggars are the equals of kings, and where the Fates that
control our actions are touched with a fine eccentricity that in a more
commonplace world would be termed madness. But there nothing is
commonplace."

"You are going