treating temples; while the
thin and waspish man, caught in the same trap (for trap I saw it was),
shouted aloud in his ill-timed mirth, the false and cruel character of
which would have made me shudder, if all expression of feeling on my
part had not been held in check by the interest I immediately
experienced in the display of open bravado with which, in another
moment, these two tried to carry off their mutual embarrassment.

"Good likeness, eh?" laughed the seamy-faced man. "Quite an idea that!
Makes him one of us again! Well, he's welcome--in oils. Can't say much
to us from canvas, eh?" And the rafters above him vibrated, as his
violent efforts at joviality went up in loud and louder assertion from
his thin throat.

A nudge from the other's elbow stopped him, and I saw them both cast
half-lowering, half-inquisitive glances in my direction.

"One of the Witherspoon boys?" queried one.

"Perhaps," snarled the other. "I never saw but one of them. There are
five, aren't there? Eustace believed in marrying off his gals young."

"Damn him, yes! And he'd have married them off younger if he had known
how numbers were going to count some day among the Westonhaughs." And he
laughed again in a way I should certainly have felt it my business to
resent if my indignation, as well as the ill-timed allusions which had
called it forth, had not been put to an end by a fresh arrival through
the veiling mist which hung like a shroud at the doorway.

This time it was for me to experience a shock of something like fear.
Yet the personage who called up this unlooked-for sensation in my
naturally hardy nature was old, and to all appearance harmless from
disability, if not from good-will. His form was bent over upon itself
like a bow; and only from the glances he shot from his upturned eyes
was the fact made evident that a redoubtable nature, full of force and
malignity, had just brought its quota of evil into a room already
overflowing with dangerous and menacing passions.

As this old wretch, either from the feebleness of age or from the
infirmity I have mentioned, had great difficulty in walking, he had
brought with him a small boy, whose business it was to direct his
tottering steps as best he could.

But once settled in his chair, he drove away this boy with his pointed
oak stick, and with some harsh words about caring for the horse and
being in time in the morning, he sent him out into the mist. As this
little shivering and